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XTbe Science Series 

EDITED BY 

professor J* /DJclteeit dattell, /ID.H., pb.S). 

AND 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



BY 



ALFRED Cr^HADDON 

M.A., D.Sc, M.R.I.A. 



ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

LONDON 

BLISS, SANDS, & CO. 
1898 






8018 



Copyright, 1898 

BV 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 




2nd COPY 
1898, 



jWOOOrlEo RECEIVED. 



TTbe 'Rniclterboclter pre00» l^ew fiorft 



^V 



A^ 






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PREFACE 

AN author is often justly criticised for the manner in 
which he has performed a self-imposed task — not un- 
frequently he is also criticised for what he has not done. I 
do not expect to be free from the former line of criticism ; 
but at the outset I would remind the reader, as I have else- 
where mentioned, that this does not profess to be a treatise 
on anthropology, or its methods, but merely a collection of 
samples of the way in which parts of the subject are studied. 
The book is not intended for scientific students, nor for ex- 
perts, but for the amateur and for that delightfully vague 
person, the intelligent reader. 

I must confess, too, that my wish is not merely to interest 
my readers, but to induce them to become workers. As 
the learned, wise, and pious John Ray wrote nearly two 
centuries ago in The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works 
of the Creation : 

" Let it not suffice us to be Book-learned, to read what others 
have written, and to take upon Trust more Falsehood than 
Truth ; but let us ourselves examine things as we have oppor- 
tunity, and converse with Nature as well as Books. Let us 
endeavour to promote and increase this Knowledge, and make 
new Discoveries, not so much distrusting our own Parts, or 
despairing of our own Abilities, as to think that our Industry can 
add nothing to the invention of our Ancestors, or correct any of 
their Mistakes. Let us not think that the Bounds of Science are 



iv PRE FA CE 

fixed like Hercules' s Pillars, and inscrib'd with a Ne plus ultra. 
The Treasures of Nature are inexhaustible. Here is employment 
enough for the vastest Parts, the most indefatigable Industries, 
the happiest Opportunities, the most prolix and undisturb'd 
Vacancies. . . . 

" Much might be done, would we but endeavour, and nothing 
is insuperable to Pains and Patience. I know that a new Study 
at first seems very vast, intricate, and difficult ; but after a little 
resolution and progress, after a Man becomes a little acquainted, 
as I may so say, with it, his Understanding is wonderfully cleared 
up and enlarged, the Difficulties vanish, and the thing grows 
easie and familiar." 

These words of John Ray have many a time stimulated 
me; may they encourage others to study human-kind. 
Once more I must insist on the sad fact that the old land- 
marks are being rapidly removed, and there is a pressing 
need for immediate investigations in anthropology in this 
as well as in all the other parts of the world. 

It is now my pleasing duty to take this opportunity of 
thanking those who have assisted me in their various ways. 

To my colleagues in different departments of anthropology 
I offer the thanks of a comrade. I have everywhere en- 
deavoured to render unto every man his dues. The Pro- 
prietor and Committee of Science Progress have kindly 
permitted me to reprint as Chapter V. an article of mine 
that appeared in the January number of that valuable 
record of recent scientific advance. 

The editor of TJie Daily Chronicle has courteously given 
me permission to make use of a series of articles on ** Toys 
and Games: Their History and Literature," which I wrote 
for the Saturday issue of that enterprising journal, and 
which were published in August and November, 1896, and 
in January and February, 1897. 

Dr. Paul Topinard, the great French anthropologist, gen- 



PREFACE V 

erously lent me the blocks of the maps he compiled to illus- 
trate the distribution of hair and eye colours in France. 
Amongst other authors to whom I am indebted for permis- 
sion to reproduce their illustrations, I would mention 
Dr. R. Collignon, Dr. J. Beddoe, Mr. C. H. Read of the 
British Museum, Professor Telesforo de Aranzadi, Mr. G. 
Thurston, and others. Finally I would like to record my 
indebtedness to my friend, Mr. Edwin Wilson, of Cam- 
bridge, the artist who has prepared many of the illustrations 
for this book. 

A. C. H. 

Inisfail, Cambridge. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Prefa.ce iii 

Introduction xv 

CHAPTER I 
Measurements and their Importance in Anthropology . . i 

CHAPTER II 
Hair and Eye Colour 12 

CHAPTER III 
Value of Head-Form in Anthropology 47 

CHAPTER IV 
The Nose 6g 

CHAPTER V 
The Ethnography of the Dordogne District .... 106 

CHAPTER VI 
The Evolution of the Cart 128 

CHAPTER VII 
The Origin of the Irish Jaunting-Car 159 

CHAPTER VIII 
Toys and Games : Cat's Cradle and Kites 174 

CHAPTER IX 
Toys and Games : Tops and the Tug-of-War .... 202 

CHAPTER X 

The Bull-Roarer 219 

vii 



VI 11 CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XI PAGE 

The Singing Games of Children 259 

CHAPTER XII 
"London Bridge": Foundation Sacrifice 275 

CHAPTER XIII 
"Draw a Pail of Water": Water Worship .... 288 

CHAPTER XIV 
Courting Games 313 

CHAPTER XV 
Funeral Games 329 

CHAPTER XVI 
Practical Suggestions for Conducting Ethnographical Invest- 
igations IN THE British Islands 348 



ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT 

FIGURE PAGE 

1. Curves of relative Brain Capacity of Cambridge University 

Students ; after Galton 9 

2. Map showing the Distribution of the Index of Nigrescence 

in England, based on military Schedules ; after Beddoe 27 

3. Map showing the Distribution of dark (brown or hazel) 

Eyes in England, based upon military Schedules ; after 
Beddoe ........... 29 

4. Map showing the Distribution of the Excess of pure blond 

OVER pure dark TYPE IN ENGLAND, BASED UPON MILITARY 

Schedules ; after Beddoe 30 

5. Map showing the Distribution of the Colour of the Eyes 

IN France ; from Topinard 43 

6. Map showing the Distribution of the Colour of the Hair in 

France ; from Topinard ....... 44 

7. Map showing the Distribution of the combined Colours of 

the Eyes and Hair in France ; from Topinard ... 45 

8. Upper and side Views of a Kalmuk's and of a Negro's Skull ; 

after Ranke 52 

9. Types of Noses in Profile ; from Topinard .... 72 

10. Head of Agrippina, Museo di Napoli ; from Hovorka . . 73 

11. A, Head of Zeus Otricoli ; B, the same with all the Hair re- 

moved, and with a corrected Profile ; from Hovorka, 
after Langer 74 

12. Heads of Japanese Men of the fine and coarse Type ; from 

Hovorka, after Balz 80 

13. Diagrams of the Variations in the Height and Breadth of 

the Noses of the poorer Classes of Brahmans of Madras 
City, of Tamil Pariahs, and of Paniyans, two-thirds 
natural Size ; after Thurston . . . ... .89 

ix 



X ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT 

FIGURE PAGE 

14. Lower Border of Apertura pyriformis of Orang-Utan ; from 

HovoRKA 103 

15. The four Types of the lower Border of the Apertura pyri- 

formis IN Man ; from Hovorka 104 

16. Outline Map of the Dordogne District 107 

17. Map of the Dordogne District, illustrating the Distribu- 

tion OF Dolichocephalism and Brachycephalism ; after 
Collignon no 

18. Map of the Dordogne District, illustrating the combined 

Distribution of light and dark Eyes and Hair ; after 
Collignon 113 

19. Map of Dordogne District, illustrating the Distribution of 

Stature ; after Collignon 116 

20. Map of Dordogne, illustrating the Distribution of length- 

height Index ; after Collignon 120 

21. Map of Dordogne, illustrating the Distribution of the 

breadth-height Index ; after Collignon . . . .120 

22. Slide-Car, Inverness (1754) ; after Burt 131 

23. Diagrams illustrating a probable Evolution of Wheels from 

A Roller 135 

24. Two block-wheel Carts, Inverness (1754) ; after Burt . .139 

25. Irish low-back Car (1824) ; after Croker .... 140 

26. Celtic Chariot, from the GOttweiger Situla ; after Szom- 

BATHY - . . . 143 

27. Agricultural Scene on a Vase in the Campana Collection, 

Louvre ; after Duruy 144 

28. Ancient Greek Carriage on a Vase ; after Duruy, from Ger- 

hard 145 

29. Myken^ean War Chariot of the Heroic Age on the Francois 

Vase ; after Duruy 146 

30.. A Series of early Greek Chariot Wheels from various 

Sources . . • 147 

31. Various Spanish Wheels ; after Telesforo de Aranzadi . 149 

32. Two Carts at Dundonald, Co. Down ; from Photographs . 157 



ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT XI 

FIGURE PAGE 

33. Irish low-back Car (1769) ; after Bush 160 

34. Early Form OF Jaunting-Car (1S41) ; after Hall . . , 165 

35. The reverse Side OF A Korean Playing-Card ; after CuLiN . 177 

36. Kites from Korea, China, and Japan (after Culin), and from 

THE Solomon Islands 189 

37. Tops from Torres Straits, Timorlaut, Straits Settlements, 

AND Stewart Islands ; after C. H, Read .... 207 

3S. Bull-Roarers from the British Islands ..... 221 

39. YoRUBA Bull-Roarer, W. Africa ; from Mrs. R. Braithwaite 

Batty 230 

40. Bull-Roarers from South Africa, North and South America, 

Malaysia, New Zealand, British New Guinea, Torres 

Straits, and Australia ; from various Sources . . 245 



/ 



FULL-PAGE PLATES 

Plate I. Upper, front, and side Views of Long and Round 
Barrow Skulls ; Photographed by the Author 
FROM Specimens in the Cambridge Anatomical 
Museum 

Plate II. Fig. i. Photograph of a Tamil Pariah ; after Thurs- 
ton. Fig. 2. Japanese Women of the fine and 
coarse Type ; after a Picture by Torii Kiyonaga 



1/^ 



V 



Plate III. Fig. i. Slide-Car, Co. Antrim ; from a Photograph 
BY Welch. Fig. 2. Slide-Car, Co. Antrim ; from a 
Photograph by the Author 

Plate IV. Fig. i. Block-wheel Car, Glenshesk ; from a Photo- 
graph by Welch. Fig. 2. Block-wheel Car, Car- 
rickfergus ; from a Photograph by Welch 



V 



V 



Plate V. 



Plate VI. 



Fig. I. Basque Ox-Waggon ; after Telesforo de Aran- 
ZADi. Fig. 2. Irish Outside- or Jaunting-Car , from 
A Photograph by Welch 



V Plates VII. 



64 



80 



132 



140 



168 



Lords from Spain"; from Photographs b/ Miss 
Clara M. Patterson 320 

VIII. "Jenny Jones"; from Photographs by Mr. 
J. A. Wood ........ 330, 332 



Xlll 



INTRODUCTION 

IT seems strange that man should study everything in 
heaven and earth and largely neglect the study of him- 
self, yet this is what has virtually happened. Anthropology, 
the study of man, is the youngest of the sciences, but who 
will say that it is the least important ? 

We may, perhaps, find one reason for this neglect in the 
peculiar complexity of the subject and the difficulty there is 
in approaching it from a dispassionate point of view ; there 
are so many preconceived opinions which have to be re- 
moved, and this is always a thankless task. Even now the 
scope and significance of anthropology have scarcely been 
recognised. 

Some well-meaning and enthusiastic students have been 
so impressed with the importance of the particular depart- 
ment with which they are more especially interested that 
they have neglected others. A disparagement even has 
sometimes been more implied than actually expressed. 
Others have been overwhelmed with the details they have 
accumulated, and have not seen the wood on account of the 
trees. The whole subject is so vast that very few have had 
the requisite training, or have, or rather have made, the 
time to compare the results of one branch with those of 
another. We thus have the trained specialist on the one 
hand, and the more or less serious amateur on the other, 
too often not only working independently of each other, but 
even ignorant of the other's labours, and even of his 



XVI INTRODUCTION 

existence. Fortunately this lack of co-operation and 
co-ordination is rapidly decreasing, and a living science of 
anthropology is emerging which will be acknowledged by 
the sister sciences as its methods and objects become more 
definitive. 

At the risk of being tedious, I think it is desirable to de- 
fine our terms at the outset.^ On the Continent the term 
anthropology is restricted to what we in England term 
physical anthropology or somatology, to use a term which 
is now being widely employed by our American colleagues 
— that is, the study of man as an animal. This comprises 
not only the comparative study of the structural differences 
between members of different races of mankind, but also the 
comparison of man with the higher apes. We prefer to re- 
tain the word anthropology for the study of man in its 
widest aspect. 

Ethnography is the description of a special people, 
whether it be a small tribe, the natives of a restricted area, 
or a large nation ; it includes a comparative study of human 
groups, and has for its aim the elucidation of the inter- 
relationships of tribes, races, and other bodies of men; thus 
it deals with the classification of peoples, their origin, and 
their migrations. 

Ethnology may also be divided into several branches, the 
four more important of which are Sociology, Technology, 
Religion, and Linguistics. 

Sociology is the study of human communities, both 
simple and complex, and an attempt is now being made to 
trace the rise of simple communities and their gradual and 
diverse evolution to the complex civilisations of ancient and 
modern times. History, in the ordinary acceptance of the 

' In the final chapter will be found a classification and international nomen- 
clature of the various departments of anthropology which has been proposed 
by Dr. D. G. Brinton, of Philadelphia. 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

term, deals more especially with the later phases of this 
metamorphosis, but an endeavour is being made to get be- 
hind history, as it were, and to attempt to account for the 
data upon which historians work. The physical conditions 
of a country, including the climate, the vegetation, and the 
indigenous animals, affect the life of the human inhabitants 
of that country ; in other words, the mode of life of a primi- 
tive people is conditioned by its environment. The method 
of living affects the family life, and so we find that certain 
types of family organisation are related to definite habits of 
life. As civilisation advances, the State acquires powers 
and regulates families as well as individuals, but the charac- 
teristics of different forms of government are themselves due 
to the type of family organisation which obtains among 
those various peoples. According to this method of in- 
vestigation, we start with physical geography and find our- 
selves drawn into statecraft and political economy. 

Other fruitful lines of study are to be found in tracing 
the evolution of tools, weapons — in fact, of all manufactured 
objects. As an example of this line of inquiry, or technol- 
ogy, I shall take the common cart, and while tracing its 
evolution we shall at the same time see that such studies 
open up wider questions than are at first apparent. 

The origin, evolution, and migration of designs and pat- 
terns is a fascinating subject, and one replete with human 
interest, as being associated with some of the deepest and 
most subtle ideas of mankind. I have already published a 
small book ^ on this subject. 

The anthropological study of religion is at the same time 
fascinating and extremely difficult. It is not my intention 
to tread far along this slippery path in the present volume. 
Those who would like to see the trend of recent inquiries 

' A. C. Haddon, Evolution in Art, as Illustrated by the Life-Histories of 
Designs. Contemporary Science Series, 1895. 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

should read the masterly works of Professor E. B. Tylor, 
the late Professor Robertson Smith, Dr. J. G. Frazer, and 
of E. Sydney Hartland. A good deal of what is included 
in that complex of beliefs, sayings, and practices which is 
known as folk-lore, comes under the designation of religion 
as that term is understood by anthropologists. 

Archaeology tries to reconstruct the ancient history of 
man from the remains of the past which are brought to 
light in various ways. Just as a historian studies contem- 
poraneous documents in order to revivify obscure historical 
periods, so the archaeologist pores over flint implements, 
fragments of pottery, and other relics, in order to recon- 
struct the life of our remote ancestors. Earthen vessels are 
comparatively easy to make, and though they are brittle, 
their fragments, when properly baked, are well-nigh inde- 
structible. The history of man is unconsciously largely 
written on shards, and the elucidation of these unwritten 
records is as interesting and important as the deciphering 
of the cruciform inscriptions on the clay tablets of Assyria. 
The book of pots has yet to be written. 

It is interesting to know what our forefathers did, to 
gauge the rank of their culture, and to trace the improve- 
ments which gradually took place ; but it would be still 
more interesting if we could recover what they thought and 
what they believed, fit is well to know their tools and their 
weapons ; it is better to know how they treated one another, 
and what were their ideas of the non-material aspect of their 
existence. For these, after all, are the most important 
departments of human life. Now for this we have two 
methods of inquiry. 

In a general survey of mankind we find that there are 
peoples in all stages of culture, and we also notice that there 
is an intense conservatism in all matters of social or religious 
importance. When a people is isolated, it is believed that 



IN TRODUC TION X i x 

changes take place with extreme slowness; indeed, it is 
probable that a mincrling of peoples, whether by commerce, 
migration, or war, is almost a necessary condition for change 
and progress. If, then, we examine a people that has for a 
long time remained isolated from contact with other peoples, 
we shall find that in most instances it is a backward people, 
and often w^hat we call a savage one. Although we cannot 
range all peoples into a sequence, and assert that one tribe 
is intermediate in culture between two others, or that a 
more civilised nation has passed through a rigorously defined 
order of evolution, yet we may hope to be able in general 
terms to place most of the peoples about whom we have 
adequate knowledge in certain stages of culture, and we may 
in this way attempt to gain some idea as to the phases 
through which our ancestors have passed. The comparative 
study of customs, modes of thought, and religion, has 
yielded results of immense importance and interest. As a 
method of inquiry it is invaluable; but even it has its dan- 
gers, and it must be used with circumspection. 

The second psychical probe into the past is folk-lore. 
One is too apt to dismiss this study with a smile of derision 
as being concerned with ghosts, fairy-tales, and old wives' 
superstitions. What does the name imply ? The " lore of 
the folk." But the " folk " bear the same relation to edu- 
cated people that savages do to civilised communities. They 
are the backward people among ourselves. The same value 
applies to the study of their actions and modes of thought 
as to the investigation of savages. But folk-lore is the in- 
vestigation of psychical survivals within a more or less 
civilised society, and thus by its means we are largely en- 
abled to study the practices and beliefs of our forefathers, 
for in an attenuated form many of these actually persist 
amongst us. By appealing to comparative custom and re- 
ligion we can often form a pretty good idea as to what those 



XX IN TR OD UC TION 

actions really signified, and so we can recover our ancestral 
religions. 

The materials for the study of anthropology are as nu- 
merous as the bodily, mental, and moral diversities among 
mankind. What man is, what he thinks, what he aspires 
after, what he does — all this is the field of our inquiry. Our 
object is to record what occurs, and to discover its signifi- 
cance. These two aims should not be disassociated. A 
considerable amount of information that has been recorded 
in the past is comparatively barren because the significance 
of it was not understood at the time. Many travellers ap- 
pear to be quite unaware that customs and beliefs, the form 
of an object and its decoration, may have a meaning that is 
by no means obvious. Further, it is only on the spot and 
from the people themselves that this significance can be dis- 
covered ; those who read my former book on Evolution in 
Art will clearly see the importance of acquiring local 
information. 

Now is the time to record. An infinitude has been irre- 
vocably lost, a very great deal is now rapidly disappearing; 
thanks to colonisation, trade, and missionary enterprise, 
the change that has come over the uttermost parts of the 
world during the last fifty years is almost incredible. The 
same can also be said of Europe and of our own country. 
Emigration and migration, the railway, the newspaper, the 
Board School — all have contributed to destroy the ancient 
landmarks of backward culture. The most interesting ma- 
terials for study are becoming lost to us, not only by their 
disappearance, but by the apathy of those who should de- 
light in recording them before they have become lost to 
sight and memory. 

Fruitful study results only from those facts of observation 
which have been fertilised by the mind that can see be- 
hind them. Nothing is easier than to burrow among de- 



INTRODUCTION XXI 

tails, to be lost among a multiplicity of facts, and to be 
overwhelmed by a mass of material. 

It is my object in this small book to present certain 
aspects only of the science of anthropology.^ I do not pre- 
tend to give an abstract of anthropology, nor even a general 
idea of the subject as a whole. But we will make several 
excursions, as it were, into the subject, not with the object 
of attempting to learn something about anthropology, but 
in order to see what anthropology can teach us about our- 
selves. (For, after all, we are of more interest to ourselves 
than any study can be!^ We will then use the methods of 
anthropology, not for the erection of an academic study, but 
for the simple purpose of explaining ourselves to ourselves. 

Our immediate object, then, is to try and discover what 
the significance is of certain of our bodily peculiarities, and 
of a few of the innumerable objects and actions that we see 
around us. 

The theory of evolution throws a bright and far-reaching 
light on the problems of anthropology, and though we may 
not be able to explain the processes of, or the reasons for 
evolution, there can be no doubt as to the fact of its occur- 
rence. There is no need to explain what is usually under- 
stood by evolution, but I would like to hint at some of the 
aspects of the evolution of man. 

Speaking in general terms, the structure of man is essen- 
tially similar to that of the higher apes. The differences 
may be superficially striking, but the resemblances are 
fundamental. The disparity is patent when we see what 
man can do with his mechanism as opposed to what an 
ape does with his, but we must not forget that it is these 
apparently slight differences of structure which make pos- 
sible the vast differences of functions ; the two are intimately 
bound up together, and so it is not wise to overlook the 
differences between man and apes. 



XXll INTRODUCTION 

The akinship then of man and Hving apes is not one of 
direct relationship, but of common descent. It is constantly 
reiterated in books that the lower races of man are more 
simian than the higher, and the anatomical differences be- 
tween an Australian or a Negro and a European are often 
described as " low," or " high," as the case may be, the 

low " character being regarded as arrested or atavistic. 
This generalisation must be accepted with great caution ; 
it is only partially true, and some of the characters on which 
reliance is placed may prove to have another signification. 

The three great groups of mankind — the white, yellow, 
and black races — are probably all divergencies from the 
same unknown ancestral stock. They have severally spe- 
cialised along different lines of evolution, and what is import- 
ant to note is that different traits of their organisation have 
become arrested, or have specialised in different degrees and 
in different directions. In some part of their organisation 
each of these groups is less specialised or more specialised 
than the other two. While the white man may, for example, 
be nearer the ape in the character of his hair than the 
Mongol or the Negro, the usual short body and long legs of 
the latter also remove him farther from the ape, to whom, 
in this respect, the other groups are more allied. Of 
course there can be no doubt that, on the whole, the white 
race has progressed beyond the black race. 

Stress is laid by evolutionists on the resemblances to one 
another of the young of different divisions of the same 
group, and this is an argument for the view that these differ- 
ent classes had a common ancestry. 

The same holds good for man. The infants of white, 
yellow, brown, red, and black people wonderfully resemble 
one another — both as to form, feature, and colour, — and not 
only so, but they very much more resemble the young of 
the higher apes than do their respective adults. 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

In fact it could be argued, with some show of plausibility, 
that the newly born infant is not purely human, but that it 
rapidly passes through a pre-human stage. 

An English baby is very unlike an English man ; apart 
from evolution there is no reason why their bodily propor- 
tions should not be similar, or why their noses should be so 
dissimilar. It is a very significant fact that among the pigmy 
peoples, such as the Andamanese and Bushmen, we find 
many infantile characteristics persisting in the adults, and 
among the taller races, the yellow people retain several juve- 
nile characteristics. Thus we find that a people may retain 
infantile characteristics in some respects and be specialised 
in others; in employing the term "characteristics," I do not 
limit myself merely to physical features, but include mental 
and moral traits. 

Anthropology also recognises the vast importance of the 
study of children. Following the strictly scientific method 
we thus enter the sacred precincts of the nursery, and in- 
quire of the suckling the answer to one of the most moment- 
ous questions man can ask, " Whence are we ? " We seek 
in the youngest man the story of the oldest man, and en- 
deavour to trace in the evanescent characteristics of earliest 
infancy some of the steps through which man has climbed 
above the brute. 

From the nursery we pass to the school and the play- 
ground, endeavouring to discover in the child some evidence 
as to the direction of man's upward progress. As the newly 
born babe reveals to us the last traces of an arboreal ances- 
tor and then speedily passes into human-kind, so the child 
repeats in its growth the savage stage from which civilised 
man has so recently emerged. 

In subsequent chapters I shall refer to primitive survivals 
in child-life. There is not only a parallelism to some extent 
in physical features between children and certain savages, 



XXIV INTRODUCTION 

but there is in children a persistence of savage psychologi- 
cal habit, and in the singing games of children a persistence 
of savage and barbaric practice. The courting, marriage, 
and funeral ceremonies of our savage forefathers are re- 
peated like a faint and degraded echo in village green or 
school playground. 

We leave the child and return to the folk whom I have 
already defined as the backward people among ourselves, 
and from their unwritten sagas and stories, their customs 
and beliefs, we can pick up the threads that have been 
dropped by the child. In certain of their oral traditions, 
especially in those which are told to the children, we find 
an unmistakable record of the clash of opposing races, but 
of a time long antecedent to history. In some of our fairy- 
tales we can recall the momentous struggle of the men of 
the Stone Age with those of the Age of Metals, and, in addi- 
tion, we can catch glimpses of the culture, habits, and 
religion of neolithic man. 

In the customs and beliefs of the folk may still be traced 
many survivals of the pagan observances and religion of our 
ancestors. 

In the life of the cultured European from his earliest in- 
fancy do we find milestones that mark the rate and extent 
of his progress, and all along this weary road, which it has 
taken mankind tens of thousands of years to traverse, do we 
find the tired ones — the laggards in the race of life — who 
mutely indicate, if we have but discrimination enough to 
read it, a record of the painful but glorious ascent from the 
brute to the human. 

Wherever man is, there can anthropology be studied. 
There is no need to travel to the uttermost parts of the 
earth ; we can prosecute researches or find food for reflection 
in our own nurseries, in the playground, on the village 
green, even in our cities. 



IN TR on UC TION XXV 

As Alphonse Karr said to his friend : 

" Make you the tour of the world, I will make the tour of my 
garden. 

" What are you going to see abroad ? How proud you will be 
in your first letter to tell me you have seen women tattooed and 
painted in diverse colours, with rings in their noses. 

" And I will answer you : \Well, my good friend, what occa- 
sion was there for going so far ? Why did you go further than 
two streets from your own house ? There was nothing to prevent 
your looking at your sister-in-law, who, after the example of a 
hundred other women you are acquainted with, puts pearl white 
and rouge upon her brow and cheeks, black upon her eyelids, 
blue to increase the apparent fulness of her veins, and passes 
rings through her ears in the same manner that savage women 
pass them through their noses. Pray, why is it more strange to 
pierce one cartilage than another ? Can the difference be worth 
going so far to see ? ' " 

So writes Alphonse Karr, and this is the true spirit of the 
philosopher/ 

' Alphonse Karr, A Tour round my Garden, edited by Rev. J. G. Wood. 
1865, p. 9. 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



CHAPTER I 

MEASUREMENTS AND THEIR IMPORTANCE 
IN ANTHROPOLOGY 

NO science can progress or be definite without measure- 
ments of one sort or another. What, then, are those 
made in anthropological inquiries, and for what purposes are 
they made ? 

Speaking generally, we may roughly class anthropological 
measuring into three groups: 

1. As a means of analysis and classification. 

2. As a test of efficiency. 

3. For identification of individuals. 

(i) TJie Identification of Criminals. — Let us commence 
with the least important from a scientific point of view — 
that for the recognition of individuals. People whom it is 
necessary to recognise with such precision are generally 
those who are wanted by the police. 

Few of us probably have ever so much as given a thought 
to the subject of the identification of criminals, but a little 
reflection will lead to the conclusion that this is really an 
important problem. In this, as in so many other matters 



2 THE STUDY OF MAN 

relating to criminology, the British are far behind some for- 
eign nations. 

The methods hitherto adopted by our Government have 
been inadequate, and, consequently, largely ineffectual, al- 
though a very successful system of criminal identification 
has been in operation in France for a dozen years. In 
1895, however, a fresh departure was made, and Dr. Garson, 
the well-known anthropologist, was appointed by the Gov- 
ernment to take charge of a new department in England for 
the identification of criminals. 

It will be obvious that a precise method of identification 
not only expedites justice and saves expense, but at the 
same time it is a safeguard to the prisoner, preventing him 
from being punished for the crimes of others. 

The identification by means of measurements was inaugu- 
rated in Paris towards the close of 1882, according to the 
methods advocated by M. Alphonse Bertillon in 1879. 
This system has been extended to the whole of France by 
M. Herbette, Director of the Penitentiary Department.' 

The subject we are about to consider is a method by 
which habitual criminals may be recognised who give a false 
name or refuse to give one at all. 

An old offender, once more in the hands of the law for 
some fresh offence that he has committed, has every reason 
for wishing to conceal his real name or the name under 
which he has been previously convicted. He sometimes 
takes the name of a person who has never been accused of 
any offence. He thus escapes the heavier punishment which 

' Cf. English translation of an address, given by M. Louis Herbette, at the 
International Penitentiary Congress at Rome, November, 1885, Melun, Ad- 
ministrative Printing, 1887; also A. Bertillon, " Notice sur le Fonctionnement 
du Service d'Identification de la Prefecture de Police," Aim. Stat, de la Ville 
de Paris, 1S87 (1889); and F. J. Mouat, "Notes on M. Bertillon's Discourse 
on the Anthropometric Measurement of Criminals," Journ. Anth. Inst., xx., 
1890, p. 182. 



MEASUREMENTS AND THEIR IMPORTANCE 3 

usually follows a second conviction. A large number of 
these professional criminals are wanted for other offences 
than those for which they are actually in custody, or they 
have very sufficient reasons for thinking that they are 
wanted by the police for some previous offence of which 
they have been guilty. Criminals do not scruple to inter- 
change names amongst themselves, though by preference 
they assume those of honest men ; some even assume the 
names of those whom they have at some previous time 
robbed. (It so happens that in France criminals, as a rule, 
no longer give aliases, but are eager to give their own names, 
as they do not wish to appear to have anything to hide. 
Further, owing to the certainty of this method of identifica- 
tion, English pickpockets left Paris in large numbers, so 
that in about three years the convictions were reduced from 
sixty-five to nineteen. Criminals arrested in foreign coun- 
tries have still greater facilities for deceiving. 

The usual descriptions which generally accompany the 
international exchange of judicial records — " chin round, 
face oval, eyes grey," etc. — have never led to the recogni- 
tion of criminals, save in the realms of romance. 

Photographs are certainly preferable to descriptions of 
any kind, but photography solves only a part of our prob- 
lem. The experiment tried in Paris has clearly demon- 
strated this. In the course of ten years the police made a 
collection of the photographs of 100,000 persons. Is it 
possible to search through these 100,000 photographs when- 
ever an arrest is made ? Clearly not. f^But, after all, the 
assistance rendered by photography is very smalf) A vast 
experience in human physiognomy is required to recognise 
in many of these photographs that they are the portrait of 
the same person taken at different times and under different 
conditions. As a matter of fact, photography is hardly of 
any use, and is now employed in Paris only as a subsidiary 



4 THE STUDY OF MAN 

means of checking other methods of identification. The 
photographs, which are taken full face and profile, are the 
last methods employed. 

(The Bertillon system consists in measuring the length of 
various parts, always at the same spot, and taken in a regu- 
lar order. These are in the order of their importance: (i) 
The length of the head ; (2) the breadth of the head ; (3) 
the length of the middle finger of the left hand; (4) the 
length of the left foot; (5) the left cubit, i. e., the forearm 
and extended hand ; (6) the length of the little finger of the 
left hand; (7) the length of the right ear; (8) the stature. 
It will be seen that most of the above are practically meas- 
urements of parts of the skeleton, and these remain constant 
when full growth has once been attained. The stature is 
the least reliable of these measurements. Lastly, the colour 
of the eyes is noted, and any individual peculiarities, such 
as moles, scars, tattoo-marks, and the like. In England it 
has been decided upon to utilise finger-prints according to 
methods introduced by Francis Galton. 

All the measurements are divided into three grades — 
long, medium, and short. The limiits of these grades have 
been arbitrarily chosen, so that an approximately equal 
number of persons will be distributed among the three 
classes. For example, the length of the head is divided 
into those that measure less than 183 mm. (millimetres), 
those between 184 and 189 mm., and those over 193 mm. 

A few years ago, when in Paris, I was introduced to M. 
Bertillon, who explained his system to me. Although the 
office was officially closed, he very kindly ordered up a 
thief who had just been captured, and this unfortunate was 
made the subject of a demonstration. 

First of all, the measurements were taken according to the 
prescribed method, the man submitting with a half-smile of 
amusement. The length of his head was 189 mm., and. 



MEASUREMENTS AND THEIR IMPORTANCE 5 

therefore, just within the middle grade, but being 148 mm. 
broad it belonged to the lowest breadth grade ; his left 
middle finger measured 92 mm. ; the left foot, 259 mm. ; 
the left cubit, 452 mm. ; and so on. 

The cards of the particulars of the men, women, and 
children are kept in separate presses. The attendant then 
w^ent to the press for the male criminals to see if this was 
an old offender. The press is divided horizontally into three 
sections for head lengths, the uppermost being for the small 
grades and the lowest for the longest heads. Each of these 
is similarly divided vertically, according to the breadths of 
the head. Thus the man was to be found in the middle 
compartment of the left-hand series. This, like the other 
compartments, is divided horizontally into three series for 
the length of the left middle finger, and each of these again 
for that of the foot. Lastly, these last are divided verti- 
cally for the three grades of the left cubit. By this simple 
system the first five measurements can be rapidly classified 
into 243 divisions, each of which is a drawer. When the 
drawer corresponding to the thief's measurements was 
opened, I saw that it was further subdivided according to 
other measurements, and in less time than it takes to de- 
scribe it two or three cards were taken from one division. 
The actual figures of the thief's measurements were com- 
pared with those on these cards, and one was picked out on 
which they exactly corresponded. There was in no case a 
difference of more than a millimetre. The old card stated 
that there were certain scars and marks, the positions of 
each being fixed by measurement from named parts of the 
body. (On examining the man, these were found to corre- 
spond accurately^ The photographs which were appended 
to the old card were kept carefully covered up. On looking 
at them the likeness was recognisable, and the man was told 
the name he had formerly given as his own, and the details 



6 THE STUDY OF MAN 

of his previous convictions. The demonstration was perfect, 
and, to do our criminal friend justice, he could not forbear 
from smiling at the celerity and neatness of the identifica- 
tion. The only source of uncertainty is when the figures lie 
just on a border-line, in which case the two series have to be 
examined. 

It takes two minutes to completely measure one individ- 
ual ; the record of the scars, particular marks, tattooing, 
etc., three minutes; the writing of the name, age, etc., ac- 
cording to the statement of the subject, two minutes — or a 
total of seven minutes for the whole operation. ' A minute 
or two suffices for actual identification of the criminal, sup- 
posing he has been measured before. 

The beauty of this system is its absolute certainty, for 
everybody has some particular marks, such as moles, scars, 
etc. Three or four of these, if actually recorded, would be 
quite enough to enable a man to be identified out of a mil- 
lion. The photograph is superfluous, and it is immaterial 
what name the man gives. 

This system of identification is one of the principal appli- 
cations of anthropology and its methods to ordinary life, 
and its utility is beyond question. 

2. AntJiropological Measurements as a Test of Efficiency. — 
It is often important that the physical fitness of people 
should be tested in order to see how they stand in relation 
to other people, and to discover certain physical imperfec- 
tions. Apart from this occasional examination, it is most 
desirable periodically to " take stock " of our bodily effi- 
ciency, in order to see whether our powers are becoming 
impaired in any way, and, if so, to take precautions; espe- 
cially important is this in the case of children and young 
people generally. This is one of the reasons which induced 
Dr. Francis Galton to establish his well-known anthropo- 
metric laboratories. 



MEASUREMENTS AND THEIR IMPORTANCE y 

"/As an example of what can easily be done, let us consider the 
measurement of eyesight. Measurement would give an indica- 
tion of the eyesight becoming less good, long before the child 
would find it out for himself, or before its impairment could 
attract the observation of others. It is frightful," writes Dr. 
Francis Galton,^ " to think of the frequent mischief to eyesight 
that has been caused by the neglect at schools of the most ele- 
mentary requisites to protect it from unnecessary strain, such as 
an abundance of light coming from the proper direction, and 
desks and chairs so shaped as to discourage a lolling or sidelong 
attitude, by supporting the book and paper squarely before the 
reader, .The stupid want of care in providing these essentials to 
eye-comfort has gone far towards converting the educated classes 
of Germany and the cultured girls of England into short-sighted 
sections of society. When measurement shows that the sight is 
beginning to be slightly impaired, there is probably time to hunt 
out and abolish the cause of the mischief before serious harm is 
done, and an occasional small fee would be little grudged by 
most persons to insure so timely a warning of danger." 

The existence of colour-blindness is another possibility 
well worth being inquired into at an early age, as it materi- 
ally limits the choice of occupation. * * It is curious, ' ' writes 
Dr. Galton, '(\p\\ late it may be in life before this remark- 
able defect is found out either by the person or his friends; 
and as it affects about one male in twenty-five, the risk of 
being subject to it is considerable." 

For the last ten years there has been an anthropometrical 
laboratory in Cambridge, during which time a very large 
number of students have been physically tested, and as the 
great bulk of the men belong to the same social grade, we 
have a very valuable series of statistics concerning what may 
be called the professional and gentle classes, and who repre- 

' F. Galton, "Why do we Measure Mankind?" Lippincotfs Magazine, 
February, i8go. 



8 THE STUDY OF MAN 

sent as good a type physically as any class of Englishmen 
under existing social circumstances can be expected to show. 
Some years ago Dr. Venn worked up the then available 
statistics on over looo men in an interesting paper on 
** Cambridge Anthropometry," ^ in which he grouped the 
students into three classes: 

(A) A first-class man in any tripos examination, or one 
who is a scholar of his college. 

(B) All the remaining ** honour men." 

(C) Candidates for the ordinary degree, or " poll men." 
Owing to the system of examinations in Cambridge and 

the knowledge of the men by their tutors, these three classes 
can be determined with great accuracy, even in the case of 
undergraduates. 

What is the difference in the physical characteristics of 
our A, B, and C classes ? We need not trouble ourselves 
with the statistics themselves, but merely note the main 
results. 

In respect of height, weight, breathing, and squeezing 
power, there is little or no difference between any of the 
classes. 

In respect of eyesight there is a decided inferiority in the 
A's, as compared with the B's and C's taken together. 

In respect of the " pull " a similar inferiority of A to B 
and B to C is manifest. 

In respect of head measurement there is a decided 
superiority of A's over B's and B's over C's. 

Dr. Galton,'^ who has gone with more detail into the head 
growth of these students, says: 

" We find that a ' high honour ' man possesses at the age of 

nineteen a distinctly larger brain than a ' poll ' man (that is, a 

' Jonrn. Anth. Inst., xviii., 1889, p. 140. 

'■^ F. Galton, " On Head Growth in Students at the University of Cambridge," 
Nature, May 3, 1888 ; Journ. Anth. Inst., xviii., i88g, p. 155. 



MEASUREMENTS AND THEIR IMPORTANCE 



Student who takes an ' ordinary ' degree) in the proportion of 241 
to 230.5/ or one that is almost 5 per cent, larger. By the end of 
his college career the brain of the ' high honour ' man has in- 
creased from 241 to 249, that is, by 3 per cent, of its size ; while 
the brain of the 'poll' man has increased from 230.5 to 244.5, o^ 
6 per cent. 

" Four conclusions follow from all this : 

" (i) Although it is pretty well ascertained that in the masses 
of the population the brain ceases to grow after the age of nine- 



230 



240 



250 



AGES 
19 

20 

21 

22 

23 



24 

25and\ 
upwards; 



c 


B 


A 








\ 






\ » 


\ 






\ « 

V 
v 


\ 


L 






i\ 


\ 






»\ 


\ 






\ \ 
\ \ 
♦ \ 


\ 



Fig. 1. 



Curves of Relative Brain Capacity of Cambridge University Men ; 

after Gallon. 

A, High Honour Men; B, Remaining Honour Men; C, Poll Men. The 
numerals along the top of the diagram signify the product of the three 
head measures — length, breadth, and height— in inches. 

teen, or even earlier, it is by no means so with university 
students. 

" (2) That men who obtain high honours have had considera- 
bly larger brains than others at the age of nineteen. 

" (3) That they have larger brains than others, but not to the 
same extent, at the age of twenty-five ; in fact their predominance 
is by that time diminished to the half of what it was. 

' These figures are arrived at by multiplying together the maximum length 
and breadth of the head and its height, the latter being taken from the vertex 
to a plane at the level of the ear-holes. 



lO THE STUDY OF MAN 

" (4) Consequently ' high honour ' men are presumably, as a 
class, both_more precocious and more gifted throughout than any 
others. We must, therefore, look upon eminent university suc- 
cess as a fortunate combination of these two helpful conditions." 

3. Anthropological Measurements as a Mea^is of Analysis 
and Classification. — It is this last aspect of anthropological 
measurements that will now claim our attention. These, 
combined with observations on the colour of the skin, hair, 
and eyes, the form of various organs, such as the nose and 
ears, and other comparisons of a similar nature, are invalu- 
able in the study of the races of mankind. In this way we 
analyse the components of a mixed people, and endeavour, 
as it were, to dissect out its racial elements. At the same 
time it is always desirable to seek for peoples that have re- 
mained approximately pure, so as to fix their ethnic type, 
which will serve as a standard when gauging mixtures. For 
example, in a certain area one may find a very uniform 
people, whom we know by history, or infer by other means, 
to have long remained isolated ; an ethnographical study of 
this group reveals a certain combination of characters, which 
we will call A. Close by is another group which by analy- 
sis resolves itself into two components, and contiguous 
are others somewhat more complex. We will assume that 
the double community is composed of B and C. Whether 
the more complex groups are composed of A B D, A C 
D, or any other combination of four types, it should be 
possible to determine their composition from the experience 
gained from the first two cases. The problem is naturally 
greatly complicated by the occurrence of all intermediate 
grades and intermixtures, for it is only exceptionally that 
individuals in a mixed community exhibit even approxi- 
mately pure characters. 

In the following three chapters I take respectively the 
colour of the hair and eyes, the form of the head, and the 



MEASUREMENTS AND THEIR IMPORTANCE II 

character of the nose as examples of the methods employed ; 
and lastly I present an abstract of the brilliant work done 
by Dr. Collignon in his studies of the anthropology of 
France, whose researches constitute a highly instructive 
example of the modern methods of anthropological investi- 
gation. 



CHAPTER II 

HAIR AND EYE COLOUR 

WHEN one looks at a crowd of Englishmen one is at 
once struck with the diversity that is apparent in 
their general appearance ; especially noticeable are the differ- 
ences in the colour of their eyes and hair. To a less degree, 
the same holds good for an assembly of Scotsmen or Irish- 
men. In some parts of the continent of Europe there is a 
similar variety of colour, but usually a more uniform colour- 
ation prevails. 

Outside of Europe, and apart from European influence, 
there is a remarkable uniformity in the colour of eyes and 
hair; and whether they be yellow, red, brown, or black 
men, the eyes are dark and the hair is almost invariably 
black. 

Our venerable and venerated English anthropologist, Dr. 
John Beddoe, long ago appreciated the fact that by noting 
the colour of the eyes and hair of large numbers of people 
it might be possible to learn something about the origins of 
a people so mixed as the English, and even to trace the 
streams of migration to their sources, assuming, of course, 
that originally the main peoples of Europe were character- 
ised by a predominance of hair and eyes of a particular 
colour. 

It is a vital question in anthropology whether races or 
considerable groups of men who may be regarded as being 

12 



HAIR AND EYE COLOUR 1 3 

related to one another, do possess physical characters in 
common, and whether these characters are constant. 

Apart from the monuments of Egypt and Assyria there 
are few pictorial representations of ancient peoples which 
are of sufficient exactitude to serve as conclusive evidence 
on these points. 

In Egypt there is an immense mass of pictorial and sculp- 
tured material for ethnographical study covering a range of 
many centuries. Over three thousand years ago the artists 
who decorated the royal tombs distinguished between four 
races : (i) the Egyptians, whom they painted red ; (2) the 
Asiatics or Semites were coloured yellow; (3) the Southerns 
or Negroes were naturally painted black ; and (4) the West- 
erns or Northerners white. 

I. Like every other people under the sun, the Egyptians 
regarded themselves as the race of men. They are distin- 
guishable by their warm complexion, their small beard and 
moustache, and their abundant crisp black hair. All Egypt- 
ologists agree that this ancient type is still represented by 
the modern Fellahin, sometimes with remarkable fidelity. 

Maspero ^ writes : 

"(The profile copied from a Theban mummy taken at hazard 
from a necropolis of the XVIIIth Dynasty, and compared with 
the likeness of a modern Luxor peasant, would almost pass for 
a family portrait. Wandering Bisharis have inherited the type 
of face of a great noble, the contemporary of Kheops ; and any 
peasant woman of the Delta may bear upon her shoulders the 
head of a Xllth Dynasty king. A citizen of Cairo, gazing with 
wonder at the statues of Khafra or of Seti I. in the Ghizeh 
Museum, is himself, at a distance of fifty centuries, the repro- 
duction, feature for feature, of those ancient Pharaohs." 

' G. Maspero, The Dawn of Civilisation : Egypt and Chaldea. Eng. trans., 
1894, p. 48. 



14 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Dr. R. Stuart Poole ' points out that two other nations 
come under the Egyptian type. 

(a) The old Kushite (that is the East African Hamitic) 
inhabitants of South Arabia and of the opposite coast of 
Africa, who traded with the Egyptians, and whose features 
were less refined than those of the Egyptians. Representa- 
tions of these people are shown in the reliefs which com- 
memorate the expedition of Queen Hatshepu, about 1600 
B.C. The voyagers travelled beyond the Red Sea as far as 
the Somali coast. 

(b) The Phoenicians can only be distinguished from the 
Egyptians by details of costume. 

2. Some of the Eastern types, which may generally be 
classed as Semitic, on the Egyptian monuments show a 
strong likeness to the Assyrians as sculptured by them- 
selves. Jews, Amorites, Arabs, and other tribes, with 
characteristic features and costume, are also unmistakably 
portrayed. 

3. The peoples of Africa to the west of Egypt were 
grouped by the Egyptians with those of the islands and 
maritime countries. These include, amongst others, the 
Tahennu, Ha-neb-u, Lebu, Mashuash, Tsekuri, Shardana, 
Shakalsha, Tuirsha of the sea Dardani, and Puhsta. 

A very characteristic representation of one of these groups 
is that of a Tahennu, or Tamehu, a Lybian people. This 
man has two ostrich feathers as a head-dress; he wears a 
short beard and moustache, and a curious curled lock of hair 
which depends in front of each ear. These fair-haired, 
blue-eyed strangers, with a light complexion, frequently 
came into contact with the Egyptians. Sometimes they 
were enslaved, as shown in the tomb of Rekhmara, in the 
time of Thothmes III. ; or others of the same race actually 

' Reginald Stuart Poole, " The Egyptian Classification of the Races of Man." 
— yourn. Anth. Inst., xvi., 1887, pp. 152, 370. 



HAIR AND EYE COLOUR 1 5 

conquered and temporarily occupied part of Egypt, as evi- 
denced by Flinders Petrie's " New Race." 

The Shardana or Shardina were the Sardinians ; the Shak- 
alsha were the Sikeli or Sicilians; the Tuirsha have been 
identified as the Tyrsenoi or Etruscans; and the Pulista are 
generally regarded as the Philistines, though some regard 
them as Pelasgians of Crete, both of which belonged to the 
same race. 

This northern group of white men coincides to a remark- 
able degree of accuracy with the latest anthropological in- 
vestigations of Professor Sergi,^ who recognises a distinct 
group of the white race, which he appropriately terms the 
Mediterranean stock. Almost the only point of difference 
between the ethnological artists of ancient Egypt and the 
enthusiastic Italian anthropologist, is that the latter in- 
cludes the ancient Egyptians themselves in that important 
group of mankind. 

4. The Egyptians also depicted negroes of various de- 
grees of purity, and which evidently belonged to recognised 
nationalities. 

Other races and peoples were noted by the Egyptians. 
Of these mention need only be made of the Hyksos or so- 
called Shepherd Kings.'* The best representation of this 
type is in one of the sphinxes, discovered at Zoan or Tanis. 
They had strongly marked features, with large brow-ridges, 
very high and broad cheek-bones, and a flat mouth. Their 
face, so full of energy, firmness, and resolution, forms, as 
Poole remarks, the greatest contrast with the air of calm re- 
pose and placid dignity peculiar to the old Egyptian kings. 
These foreign over-lords conquered Egypt before 2000 B.C., 

' G. Sergi, Origine e Diffusione della Stirpe Mediterranean iSqS- 

^ It would be preferable to adopt Dr. F. Galton's suggestion, and use the 

word "herdsmen" instead of "shepherds" in connection with the Hyksos. — 

Journ. Anth. Inst., xix. , p. 194. 



l6 THE STUDY OF MAN 

and were expelled four hundred years later. Sir William 
Flower ' has noted Mongolian characters in their features, 
and suggests that the invasion and occupation of Egypt by 
the so-called ** Shepherds " was one of the numerous in- 
stances in which some of the nomadic Tatar hordes of Cen- 
tral and Northern Asia have poured forth from their native 
lands, and overrun and occupied for a longer or shorter 
period the countries lying to the west and south of them. 
If this view can be maintained, the Hyksos invasion and 
occupation of Egypt would have been only one of the serie^, 
of which the conquests of Attila, Tchinghis Khan, Timur, 
and the more permanent settlements of the Finns, the Mag- 
yar, and the Turks in Europe are well-known examples. 

As Dr. Poole points out in considering the representations 
from the monuments, we must remember three leading 
characteristics of Egyptian art : 

1. That in reliefs and frescos the eye was represented 
full face, and therefore we have to make allowance for this 
peculiarity in our attempt to define types. This done, and 
the comparison made with sculptures in the round, of which 
we had examples of some leading types, we found : 

2. Remarkable naturalness and force of character, remind- 
ing us of early Italian sculpture, leading to: 

3. Love of caricature in its portrayal of hostile nations, 
for which again allowance must be made. 

But even making full allowance for all these, we need not 
be afraid of trusting the Egyptian artist. 

The sculptures from Assyria and Babylon can also be 
brought into evidence to support the general conclusions 
drawn from those of Egypt. According to Bertin,^ they are 
more realistic in many ways than the Egyptian pictures, 

' yourn. Anth. hist., xvi., p. 377. 

*G. Berlin, "The Races of the Babylonian Empire."— /<5/V., 1888, p. 
104. 



HAIR AND EYE COLOUR 1 7 

though they are also more conventional in some points. As 
in Egypt, so here, the faces are represented in profile with 
eyes in full face. This has given the false notion of 
oblique eyes in the Babylonian race, but the error of this 
notion is easily shown by the faces of the man-headed bulls 
and the few Assyrian statues. The artists appear to have 
given great care to the representations of the facial types. 

In Assyria, Bertin finds two types: (i) The aristocratic 
and military caste, with a long head, straight forehead, 
slightly curved nose hanging a little over the upper lip, and 
often thin lips; the hair was wavy. (2) The lower classes, 
with a small round head, low retreating forehead, high 
cheek-bones, projecting jaws, but with a receding chin ; the 
nose is often very large and prominent, generally frizzly hair 
and beard, and of short stature. 

The higher Babylonian class was not very dissimilar from 
the Assyrian, but the nose was straight, never aquiline, and 
the general expression of the face was quiet and smiling, 
well in agreement with the general moral character of the 
Babylonians; it has nothing of the stern expression of the 
Ninevites. 

The Assyrians correctly represented the Arabs with a 
long oval head, high forehead, and a straight nose of 
moderate size. 

The reliefs of the two ambassadors who visited Assurban- 
ipal, in Elam, offer all the characteristics noticed in the 
modern Armenians — long curved nose, fleshy lips, short 
stature. The general appearance is decidedly Jewish, as in 
the modern Armenians. This fixity of the pre-Aryan 
Armenian type is fully acknowledged by anthropologists. 

Two types of Jews have been distinguished : (i) The high 
type — with the characteristic '' Jewish " nose, which is 
sometimes called the Semitic type, but erroneously, as the 
purest Semites, the Arabians of the desert, do not exhibit 



1 8 THE STUDY OF MAN 

it. The face of this type has an intelligent and dignified 
appearance. (2) The low type, as illustrated, according to 
Bertin, by the Jews captured at Lachish by Sennacherib, 
701 B.C., and by the Phoenician sailors on a bas-relief in the 
British Museum. The head is round, the forehead low and 
retreating, but the nose is rarely much developed ; in many 
cases the lips are thick, the hair frizzly, and the stature of 
the medium. This type, which may be due to a mixture 
with the same race as that which formed the low type of 
Mesopotamia, still sometimes recurs among the Ashkenazim 
(German-Polish) division of the Jewish race. 

The persistency of the Jewish type is admitted on all 
hands, as Goethe stated this well-recognised fact in the 
following words: " Es ist das beharrlichste Volk der Erde. 
Es ist, es war, es wird sein." Joseph Jacobs, who has 
made an elaborate study of Jewish anthropology, states ^ 
that the persistency of the Jewish type for the last 2600 
years is conclusively proved by the Assyrian bas-relief of 
the captive Jews of Lachish. 

Without going into further detail or multiplying refer- 
ences, it may be accepted that where a people, like the 
Jews, has kept itself fairly pure, and not intermarried to 
any considerable extent with peoples of alien blood, the 
ethnical characters may persist for some 3000 years. It is 
true that Renan, Neubauer,'' and others have argued against 
the purity of the present-day Jews, but Jacobs traverses 
their arguments and arrives at opposite conclusions. He 
draws attention to the comparative infertility of mixed mar- 
riages, that is, between Jews and Gentiles, and to the 
superior potency of Jewish blood. Taking these facts into 

' Joseph Jacobs, " On the Racial Characteristics of Modern Jews." — Journ. 
Anth. Inst., xv., 1885, P- 39- 

^ A. Neubauer, " Notes on the Race-Types of the Jews." — Ibid., 
p. 17. 



HAIR AXD EYE COLOUR 1 9 

consideration along with the very small number of mixed 
marriages in the past, especially with non-Semitic peoples, 
Jacobs sees " no reason from history for denying that the 
Jews of the present day were the direct descendants of 
the Jews of the Bible." ^ 

There are undoubted wide divergencies from the Jewish 
type of skull, nose, eyes, hair, etc. ; but the Rev. Dr. Her- 
mann Adler, the Chief Rabbi, believes ^ that the dark and 
blond type are original, dating from Bible times, and de- 
scribed respectively: " His locks are curling, and black as a 
raven " (Canticles v., ii), and " He was ruddy, and withal 
fair of eyes and goodly to look upon " (i Samuel xvi., 12). 
That the existence of the blond type was not due to inter- 
marriage since Biblical times might be proved by the fact 
that it was to be found among the Jews of North Africa, 
Syria, Arabia, and Persia, where, owing to the prevalence 
of fanaticism, mixed marriages had rarely, if ever, taken 
place. 

Dr. Felix von Luschan,^ who has paid considerable atten- 
tion to the problem of the origin of the Jews, states that the 
modern Bedouins must be considered as pure descendants 
of the old Semitic race. They have long, narrow heads, 
dark complexion, and a short, narrow, and straight nose, 
which is in every respect the direct opposite of what we are 
accustomed to call a " typical Jewish nose." The earliest 
Phoenician skulls seem identical with old and modern 
Bedouin skulls. Of our modern Jews nearly fifty per cent, 
are broad-headed (brachycephalic), eleven per cent, have fair 
complexion, and not more than five per cent, correspond to 
what we now learn to be the real old Semitic type. In 
Northern Syria, the land of the old Aramaeans, nearly all 

* Loc. cit., p. 62. 

^ Journ. Anth. Inst., xv. , p. 56. 

" Felix von Luschan, " Jews and Hittites." — Science, xxiii., 1894, p. 21. 



20 THE STUDY OF MAN 

the heads are brachycephahc, with indices near to 90, and 
these same brachycephalic elements we find everywhere in 
Western Asia. The Armenians are most remarkable for 
the nearly complete uniformity of their types, for their dark 
complexion, their extreme brachycephalism, and for their 
large and hooked " Jewish " nose. 

These and other investigations lead us to the conviction 
that Syria and Asia Minor were in early times inhabited by 
a homogeneous and extremely brachycephalic race, of 
which the modern Armenians are the nearly pure descend- 
ants, and which we find more or less mixed with strange 
elements in many of the other races that now inhabit West- 
ern Asia. This old brachycephalic race, which from its be- 
ginning was utterly distinct from any Semitic tribe, and was 
in its physical aspect the very opposite of the Semites, can 
be identified, according to Von Luschan, only with the 
Hittites (the same Hittites mentioned as a Syrian tribe in 
the Bible), who had been a strong and formidable enemy 
to Ramses II., and were finally conquered by Assyrian 
kings in long wars and fights, beginning earlier than the 
times of Assurnassirpal and ending probably only in those of 
Esarhaddon, as we read in the Assyrian annals from the 
ninth century to the seventh century B.C. Excavations 
made a few years ago in Sendjirli, the old Sammal, known 
in Assyrian texts as a Hittite residence in Northern Syria, 
have brought to light a large series of old Hittite sculptures; 
the Armenian character of the men represented on the walls 
and in the royal palaces of this old town is most striking, 
and we cannot err if we regard the inhabitants of Sammal 
as the direct ancestors of the modern Armenians, who still 
inhabit the neighbourhood of the place, ill-treated in our 
times by Turks and Kurds, and without any knowledge of 
their glorious history in ancient and mediaeval times. 

The old Hittite inscriptions were in very curious, heavy, 



HAIR AND EYE COLOUR 21 

and bulky-looking kind of hieroglyphics, but about looo B.C. 
the Semitic writing and language was introduced, which 
soon replaced the Hittite language and writing. For ex- 
ample, two inscriptions have been found, written by native 
kings, the one in the ninth, the other in the eighth century 
B.C., both in good old Semitic alphabetical characters. 

Thus, in the ninth century B.C. Semitic influence was 
great in Northern Syria, and we can easily understand how 
Semitic writing and language soon became dominant among 
people of Western Asia that were originally without a drop 
of Semitic blood ; and then we understand also why most 
of our modern Jews have the Armenian type and not the 
Semitic. 

The fair element among the modern Jews is best explained 
by an old, as opposed to a post-biblical racial mixture. 
This we may find in the intercourse of the old native Syrians 
with the Amorites and other Canaanites (Deut. ix., 2), *' a 
people great and tall," who were fair and had blue eyes, as 
the old Egyptian painted monuments show us. These are 
the eastern representatives of the great Mediterranean race. 

Von Luschan thus sums up his conclusions: ** So we see 
in our modern Jews the descendants of three different races, 
the Hittites, the Amorites, and the Semitic nomads, who 
immigrated into Syria only about m the times of Abraham." 

Much has been written upon the prevalence of red hair 
among the Jews. Jacobs ^ finds that it occurs among Sep- 
hardim (Spanish Jews) to a greater extent than among Ash- 
kenazim (German-Polish Jews), and it has never been 
contended that the Sephardim have mixed much with any 
race markedly rufous, though a certain amount of erythrism 
(or red-hairiness) was introduced into Spain by the Goths. 
Where it does occur among Ashkenazim of North Europe it 
is found more among Jews than in the indigenous popula- 

' Loc. cit., n. 46. 



22 THE STUDY OF MAN 

tion. (Jacobs points out that red hair seems to be only a 
natural complement to black, and its presence among Jews 
is not due to intermixture, but probably to defective nutri- 
tion. 

The existence of blue eyes among Jews in relatively large 
proportions need not be regarded as overwhelming proofs of 
intermixture. As is well known, \all) eyes are blue at birth, 
and if no brown pigment is deposited in the front of the iris 
the eyes remain bluish to the end of life. 

Thus blue eyes, as well as red hair, are a kind of minor 
albinism, and may result from defective nutrition, or other 
physiological causes. Jacobs finds ' confirmation in the 
view that this is the real cause of its occurrence among 
Jews from the fact that we find blue eyes among Asiatic as 
well as European Jews. On the other hand, this would be 
equally well accounted for by an infusion of Amoritic blood. 

We may then accept the conclusion that the Jews have 
remained a persistent type for thousands of years, and that 
though they do now present variations in their features, 
these are due not so much to subsequent miscegenation as 
to a primitive complexity of origin, as is partly evidenced 
by the Assyrian reliefs. 

As the result of long experience Beddoe ^ has come to 
estimate very highly the permanence of the colours of hair 
and eyes. ** It is," as he justly states, " of course impos- 
sible for an evolutionist to regard them as absolutely per- 
manent. But one may readily conceive, as I do, that 
whenever a distinct and tolerably homogeneous breed has 
been established, its colour may remain very much the 
same so long as the conditions of natural selection remain 
nearly identical." The material to be worked upon, as he 
points out, lies ready to hand in our streets and market 
places, not hidden in museums and charnel houses. 

^ Loc. cii., p. 47. ^ John Beddoe, The Races of Britain, 1S85, p. 2. 



HAIR AND EYE COLOUR 23 

An obvious objection to such observations is the different 
way in which people see colours or are impressed by them. 
To take an example adduced by Beddoe : almost all French 
anthropologists say that the majority of persons in the north 
of France are blond, whereas almost all Englishmen would 
say they were dark; each group of observers setting up as a 
standard what they are accustomed to see around them when 
at home. What is darkish brown to most Englishmen would 
be chestnut in the nomenclature of most Parisians, and per- 
haps even blond in that of Auvergne or Provence. Then, 
again, most people exaggerate the relative prevalence of 
some striking feature, such as red hair. 

It has been attempted to obviate the discrepancies due to 
national idiosyncrasy or to personal equation as to the dis- 
crimination of colours by printing tints for comparison. 
These colour-scales are very useful for determining the hues 
of the skin, and also, though to a less extent, for the colours 
of the iris; but they are of comparatively little use for 
recording the tints of the hair, as the scales are printed in 
flat tints, so different from the gloss and translucency of 
hair. 

French anthropologists have, however, worked very 
largely with such colour-scales, and a limited number are 
printed in that valuable little book. Notes and Queries on 
Anthropology, published by the Anthropological Institute 
(3 Hanover Square, London, W.). 

With that practicality which characterises his methods, 
Dr. Beddoe has devised a very simple method of recording 
the colours of the hair and eyes of people. The advantages 
•of his system are that it is accurate as need be, easy and 
rapid to operate, and it can be employed without attracting 
any attention. 

Dr, Beddoe * acknowledges three classes of eyes, distin- 

^ The Races of Britai7i, p. 3. 



24 THE STUDY OF MAN 

guished as much by shade as by colour — light, intermediate, 
and dark. 

1. To the first class are assigned all blue, bluish-grey, and 
light grey eyes. 

2. To the second or medium class belong dark grey, 
brownish grey, very light hazel or yellow, hazel-grey, formed 
by streaks of orange radiating into a bluish-grey field, and 
most shades of green, together with all the eyes whose 
colour is uncertain after an ordinarily close inspection. 

3. To the third class are allocated the so-called black 
eyes, and those usually called brown and dark hazel. 

The hair colours are classed according to the same observ- 
er into groups, which he distinguishes by the following 
initials, R., F., B., D., N. 

Class R. (red) includes all shades which approach more 
nearly to red than to brown, yellow, or flaxen. 

Class F. (fair) includes flaxen, yellow, golden, some of the 
lightest shades of our brown, and some pale auburns, in 
which the red hue is not very conspicuous. 

Class B. (brown) includes numerous shades of brown. 

Class D. (dark) includes the deeper shades of brown up 
to black. 

Class N. (niger) includes not only the jet black, which has 
retained the same colour from childhood, and is generally 
very coarse and hard, but also that very intense brown 
which occurs to people who in childhood have had dark 
brown (or in some cases deep red) hair, but which in the 
adult cannot be distinguished from coal black, except in a 
good light. 

The card adopted by Beddoe will be found to be very 
practical. It may be made of any size, but it is convenient 
to have it about 3|- inches long by \\ inches broad, so that 
it may be held in the palm of the hand and carried in the 
waistcoat pocket. 



HAIR AND EYE COLOUR 



25 



R 


F 


B 


D 


N 


R 


F 


B 


D 


N 


R 


F 


B 


D 


N 





The card is ruled into three main divisions corresponding 
to the groups of eye-colours — light, medium, dark. Each 
of these is again subdivided into columns for the five classes 
of hair: red, fair, brown, dark, and black. Lastly, the card 
is divided horizontally through the centre, the upper being 
reserved for statistics of men, and the lower for those of 
women. 

A second card should be similarly used for children. 
Those about the age of eighteen and over may be classed as 
adults. 

The locality, date, name of observer, and other details, 
such as the particular occasion, may be written on the back, 
but it is convenient to leave a blank space on the face for 
the insertion of the name of the locality. Further sugges- 
tions for the employment of these cards will be found at the 
end of the book in the chapter devoted to practical observa- 
tions in the field. 

A ready means for comparing the colours of different 
peoples is obtained by the Index of Nigrescence,' which 
Beddoe has introduced. 



*' The gross index is gotten by subtracting the number of red 
and fair-haired persons from that of the dark-haired, together 
with twice the black-haired. The black is doubled, in order to 

' Races of Britain, p. 5. 



26 THE STUDY OF MAN 

give its proper value to the greater tendency to melanosity shown 
thereby ; while brown [chestnut] hair is regarded as neutral, 
though in truth most of the persons placed in B are fair-skinned, 
and approach more nearly in aspect to the xanthous [light] than 
to the melanous [dark] variety." 

The formula is : 

D + 2N-R-F = Index. 

From the gross index the net, or percentage index, is of 
course readily obtained. 

It is evident that the light colours range below and the 
dark above zero, and that the fairer the population the 
greater will be the minus quantity. 

The index for the eyes is obtained by subtracting the 
light from the dark and neglecting the neutral shades, thus: 

Dark — Light ■= Index. 

Dr. Collignon adopts another plan : he reduces all his 
figures to percentages; then for any given district he adds 
the light hair and the light eyes together, and does the same 
with the dark hair and eyes, dividing each total by two. 
Lastly, he constructs maps to show the relative excess of 
one total over the other. 

In that mine of information, TJie Races of Britain ^'^ Bed- 
doe has published a series of maps, which he has constructed 
from statistics based upon about 13,800 entries in the Hue 
and Cry, relating to deserters from the army, and to a much 
smaller extent, deserters from the navy and absentees from 
militia drill. Through the kindness of my friend I am able 
to reproduce three of these maps, which set forth the broad 
features of the distribution of the hair- and eye-colours of 
the male population of England. Dr. Beddoe has made, 
in addition, a vast number of observations of this class, and 

' P. 143, et seq. 



HAIR AND EYE COLOUR 



27 



he finds that his data coincide very fairly well with the 
military statistics. The personal investigations of Beddoe 




Fig. 2. 

Map Showing the Distribution of the Index of Nigrescence in England, 

Based upon Military Schedules ; after Beddoe. 



28 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



afford a more accurate and minute means of analysis, and 
they bring out a number of very suggestive facts that are 
lost in the synthetic maps based on the military schedules. 

The maps based on the military schedules accord with 
ethnological history in exhibiting a large proportion of light- 
coloured hair in the regions most subject to invasion and 
colonisation and of dark-coloured hair in the far west. 

Taking the four kingdoms, their order from light to dark 
is as follows : 



EYES. PER CENT. 

Scotland 72.2 

Ireland 70.2 

England 61.6 

Wales 56.6 



HAIR. INDEX OF 

NIGRESCENCE. 

Scotland 3.1 

England 5^6 

Wales 16.8 

Ireland 18.8 



Connaught (with 70.6 per cent.) ranks second to Ulster 
(with 73.4 per cent.) as to lightness of eyes, and has more 
dark hair than any province of Ireland or of Great Britain 
except Argyle. This is in agreement with the feature that 
strikes travellers in the west of Ireland, the preponderance 
of dark brown hair combined with grey or blue-grey eyes.^ 

In England most of the *' mixed brown type," as it is 
called — that is, brown, hazel, or " black " eyes, with brown 
(chestnut), dark brown, or black hair — occurs in Dorset, 
Wilts, Cornwall, Gloucestershire, the Welsh Marches, South 
Wales, Bucks, and Herts. 

For the sake of clearness I will take a few counties of 
England only, and give the conclusions to which Dr. Bed- 
doe has arrived from his studies of their ethnography. 

" Lincolnshire, for example, is supposed to be a particularly 
Teutonic county. Whether Lindum Colonia was destroyed by 

' Cf. a paper recently published by Dr. Beddoe " On Complexional Differ- 
ences between the Irish with Indigenous and Exotic Surnames." — Journ, 
Anth. Inst., xxvii., 1897, p. 164. 



HAIR AND EYE COLOUR 



29 



the Angles we do not know ; perhaps, as it kept its name and 
situation, it fared better than most Romano-British towns, and 




Fig. 3. 

Map Showing the Distribution of Dark (Brown or Hazel) Eyes in England, 
Based upon Military Schedules ; after Beddoe. 



10 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



retained more of its ancient population ; but certainly Lincoln- 
shire received a large colony of Angles, who divided it into a 




Fig. 4. 

Map Showing the Distribution of the Excess of Pure Blond over Pure Dark 

Type in England, Based upon Military Schedules ; after Beddoe. 



HAIR AND _ EYE COLOUR 3 1 

great number of hundreds, and who were subsequently overlaid 
by a heavy stratum of Danes, as the place-names testify. The 
inhabitants have the tall and bulky frame which is generally 
believed to be Anglo-Danish, though the nature of the soil and 
other conditions may have to do with it. Lincolnshire stands 
third in all England on the blond scale as tested by the index of 
nigrescence." ' 

Dr. Beddoe's personal observations in the county indicate 
a moderate proportion of dark eyes and a great deal of light, 
or lightish brown hair, with a low index of nigrescence ; 
these observations are confirmed respectively by the maps 
(Figs. 2 and 3). The modern population of Lincoln are a 
fair and handsome people, with regular features; blue-eyed, 
says Professor Phillips — but Dr. Beddoe calls them blue or 
light hazel; the latter hue is very common at Boston. The 
civic population there, though not quite so strikingly fair as 
in the surrounding peasantry, are much more so than in 
most parts of the islands; they have all the characteristics 
of pure Saxo-Frisians, and are hardly distinguishable from 
the frequenters of Antwerp market.'^ Their index of nigres- 
cence is the lowest Dr. Beddoe has met with in any con- 
siderable town in Britain. 

From Lincoln to Nottingham, along the Vale of the 
Trent, the same breed of men prevails. Mr. D. Mackin- 
tosh, who has carefully studied the features, makes the 
leading points of his Danish type a long face, high cheek- 
bones, with a sudden sinking-in above on each side of the 
forehead, high and long nose, head elevated behind, reddish 
hair. There is a traditional attribution of red hair to the 
old Danish invaders in some parts of the country, but Dr. 
Beddoe does not believe " the colour is common in Lincoln- 
shire nowadays. The high, finely-formed nose and prom- 
inence of the superciliary ridges, yet with fairly arched 

^ Races of Britain, p. 145. ' Loc. cit., p. 252. 



32 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



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HAIR AND EYE COLOUR 33 

brows, not the straight penthouse of the Scotch and Irish, 
are frequently seen in Denmark ; and where they are very 
prevalent among the Anglians a Danish cross may be sus- 
pected." ^ Mr. Park Harrison lays great stress upon this 
feature as Danish, It is common to the Borreby race and 
to the British bronze men, to the Sion type of Switzerland, 
and to many Savoyards. 

Leicestershire was largely colonised by the Danes; Rut- 
land was not so. The former differs from the other North- 
Midland counties, apparently, by having retained a good 
proportion of the dark pre-Anglian stock. 

In the Triads, and elsewhere in old Welsh literature the 
Coranied are referred to. These have been 

" identified with the Coritavi, or Coritani, of the Romans, from 
the similarity of the first syllable in each word, from a statement 
that the Coranied settled about the Humber, and from the name 
of Ratis Corion having been applied to Leicester, seemingly the 
chief town of the Coritavi. The only grounds for making the 
Coranied and Coritavi (allowing them to be the same) Germans 
are their siding with the Saxons, and having a Latin name end- 
ing in AVI, like the undoubtedly Germanic tribes of the Batavi 
and Chamavi." ' 

Dr. Beddoe entirely disagrees with this view for the fol- 
lowing reasons : 

" They are supposed to have occupied the counties of Lincoln, 
Nottingham, Derby, Leicester, Rutland, and part of Northamp- 
tonshire; in these counties I can find no Roman station whose 
name appears to be Teutonic, while the important town of Mar- 
gidunum, near Southwell in Nottinghamshire, bears a name 
almost certainly Celtic, and Ratis Corion does the same; and 
Nottingham would seem to have remained Celtic long enough 
for its Welsh name not to have been altogether forgotten even in 

^ Loc. cit., p. 253. 2 Loc. cit., p. 23. 

3 



34 THE STUDY OF MAN 

the time of Alfred, for Asser says it was called in Welsh Tig- 
guocobauc. Again, if the Coritavi were Germans, and were 
overlaid by successive strata of Angles and Danes, one may 
reasonably expect to find the Teutonic ph3^sical type prevalent 
over their whole area to a degree not found elsewhere in Britain. 
Now, in the northern part of the Coritanian area it is really very 
prevalent, but in the southern (Leicestershire and Northampton- 
shire) there is, if I may judge by the colours of the hair and eyes, 
a strong non-Teutonic element. The following table (page 35) 
shows a great difference between Lincoln and Leicester, Notting- 
ham and Northampton, in these respects, there being a much 
larger proportion of dark hair in the two more southern towns. ' 

" Professor Phillips, than whom no ethnologist was a keener 
observer, once visited Leicester with the expectation of finding 
a strongly marked Scandinavian type predominant there; but 
he was surprised to find a dark-haired type, which he supposed 
to be Celtic, equally prevalent." 

The northern part of Cambridgeshire is also supposed to 
retain a large proportion of British blood ; the fens formed 
the impenetrable retreat, and we all know how the Isle 
of Ely held out against the Normans. In his memoir on 
* ' Stature and Bulk of Man in the British Isles, ' ' Dr. Beddoe " 
quotes Dr. L. Clapham and Dr. H. Stuckey, as finding 
rather more hazel and brown than blue or grey eyes ; out 
of fifty observations twenty-seven eyes were dark and 
twenty-three light. I remember well, on returning to Cam- 
bridge after a long residence in Ireland, expecting to find a 
tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed population preponderating in 
Cambridgeshire, but, on the contrary, I was struck with the 
proportionately large number of short, dark-haired, dark- 
eyed persons. According to Dr. Beddoe the southern part 
of the country is more like Norfolk and Suffolk, anthropo- 
logically.^ 

^ Loc. cit., p. 24. "^ Mem. Anthrop. Soc, iii., 1869, pp. 458, 459. 

^ Races of Britain^ p. 254. 



HAIR AND EYE COLOUR 



35 



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2,6 THE STUDY OF MAN 

"These two counties," continues Dr. Beddoe, "are more 
Anglian than either Danish or British. Mr. Grant Allen, 
whose summary of the Brito-Saxon controversy, in his excellent 
little book on Anglo-Saxon Britain, is about the fairest we have, 
dwells, perhaps, a little too much on the British element in East 
Anglia. It is, perhaps, stronger in Suffolk than in Norfolk. In 
Essex I think that there was a considerable survival of the Romano- 
Britons, and that though the invading Saxons preponderate near 
the coast, it is not so in the interior forest country. At Braintree 
a Huguenot colony have left their surnames and complexions." ' 

Mr. Park Harrison has noted that the people of Brandon 
are comparatively dark. This is a particularly interesting 
place, as in Neolithic times pits were sunk in the chalk, and 
flint was quarried for the manufacture of implements; there 
is reason to believe that since that date this industry has 
never ceased, and at the present time the flint knappers of 
Brandon manufacture gun-flints for tjie African market. 
Quite recently Dr. C. S. Myers has published a valuable 
paper "^ on the large collection of skulls from this locality 
that are in the Cambridge Anatomical Museum. In the 
vicinity are two Roman camps, and near by runs the Ick- 
nield Way, the great war and trade route of the Iceni in pre- 
Roman times. A few skulls resemble the Neolithic or Long 
Barrow type. The skulls of the brachycephalic series do 
not belong to the Round Barrow type, which is quite unre- 
presented, but are to be allocated to a fairly widely-spread 
Romano-British type. Among the elongated skulls Mr. 
Myers has proved the occurrence of the old Row Grave 
type of Germany ; it is a significant fact that about 372 A.D. 
the Alemannic Bucinobantes came from Mainz, on the right 
bank of the Rhine, and appear to have settled within twenty 

' Loc. cit., p. 254. 

■^ C. S. Myers, "An Account of Some Skulls Discovered at Brandon, Suffolk." 
— Journ. Anth. Inst., xxvi., i8g6, p. 113. 



HAIR AND EYE COLOUR 37 

miles of Brandon, at Buckenham, in Norfolk. Allied to 
these skulls is the long, low-crowned Batavian type, which 
also occurs at Brandon. Only one definitely Saxon skull 
was noted. The evidence points to the fact that the burial- 
ground, whence these skulls were obtained, was that of a 
people of mixed ethnic character, belonging to a time ante- 
cedent to the Saxon invasion; but it is probable that even 
then Saxon settlers were arriving in small numbers. Mr. 
R. J. Horton-Smith ' also alludes to East Anglian craniology 
in his paper on the craniology of the South Saxons. His 
main points are that the South Saxons were not an abso- 
lutely pure race, they had a little British blood in them, 
though the amount was probably very small. The Wessex 
Saxons were less pure than the South Saxons, owing to 
their more frequent intermarriage with the British popula- 
tion. The East Anglians have a form of skull slightly 
different to that of the South Saxons. It is rather broader, 
less tapeinocephalic (i. e., less low in the crown), and meso- 
seme instead of microseme {i. e., the orbits are higher and 
less oblong) ; the face is also relatively longer, and the cranial 
capacity larger. 

We will now pass to the opposite end of England, and 
again I quote from Dr. Beddoe : 

" The people of Devon are for the most part dark-haired, and 
the Gaelic combination of blue or grey eyes, with dark brown or 
blackish hair, is very frequent among them. When the eyes are 
hazel, on the other hand, the hair is not seldom lightish. In the 
district about Dartmouth, where the Celtic language lingered for 
centuries, the index of nigrescence is at its maximum, exceeding 
fifty. But around the estuaries of the Taw, the Torridge, the 
Tamar, and perhaps the Exe, Frisian, or Danish settlements seem 

' R. J. Horton-Smith, " The Cranial Characteristics of the South Saxons 
compared with those of the other races of South Britain." — yourn. Anih. Inst,^ 
xxvi., 1896, p. 82. 



38 THE STUDY OF MAN 

to have been effected. In these localities there is a large pro- 
portion of blonds, which in the case of Plymouth affects the 
neighbouring part of Cornwall to some extent. The Devonians 
are usually rather short and strongly made, with heads of good 
size and considerable occipital projection. 

" Cornwall nourishes a stalwart race superior to the Devonians 
in stature and length of ]imb;rtKe miners, again, seem to surpass 
the agricultural population, though of this I have not statistical 
proof. In each case there may have been a process of selection, 
for Cornwall probably gave the last refuge to the free British 
warriors, who were gradually forced back by the West Saxons 
into the peninsula, while their serfs, accustomed to the yoke, may 
have bowed their necks for the most part to that of the strangers. 
The stature, as deduced by Roberts and Rawson from 305 ob- 
servations, is 5 ft. 7.9 in. or 1726 mm., and I do not think this 
is over the mark. The Cornish are generally dark in hair, and 
often in eye; they are decidedly the darkest people in England 
proper; they resemble the Scottish Highlanders in their warmth 
of colouring. The point which comes out most distinctly is the 
prominence of the glabella, and (probably also) of the brow 
ridges. To these may be added, more doubtfully, a receding 
forehead, a head much arched longitudinally, and broad about 
the parietal eminences. All these points, it will be observed, 
are common to the Bronze Race. All the British types, how- 
ever, occur in Cornwall, and the most characteristic is, I think, 
Iberian, with a dash of the Semitic. Barnard Davis was struck 
with the heaviness of the mouth and lower part of the nose; 
this is a common feature among the earlier races of Britain, but 
is certainly not universal in Cornwall." ' 

The map of the nigrescence index shows that the majority 
of dark-haired people occur in our western districts. Corn- 
wall, for example, has the highest index (20.6), but even 
there there are 18.6 per cent, of the men of the pure 
blond type (including red hair), and but 24.6 per cent, of 

^ Loc. cit., pp. 258, 259. 



HAIR AND EYE COLOUR 39 

the pure brown type, the great bulk of the population be- 
longing to the mixed blond type or the mixed brown type. 

The following conclusions may be drawn from this short 
sketch of the distribution of hair and eye colours in the 
Eastern Counties, and in the extreme south-west of England. 

Spread all over England was a dark-haired, brown-eyed 
people, who, from other evidence, appear to have been 
slight of build, and distinctly dolichocephalic. These are 
usually spoken of as Iberians, or more correctly as the Ibe- 
rian branch of the Mediterranean race. They are the men 
of the polished stone (Neolithic) age, and they often buried 
their dead in long barrows. We may recognise in them the 
true autocthones of Britain, for we have little precise in- 
formation about Palaeolithic man, nor can we yet tell how 
far he persisted into later periods. Mr. Gomme * brings 
evidence to bear in support of his view that these non-Aryan 
people were agriculturalists. 

'^We know that agriculture tends of itself to fix men to 
the soil, and when agriculturalists are conquered by peoples 
of other social organisation, as practically always occurs, 
they become still more rooted, and for good reason. The 
conquerors are usually turbulent, warlike, mobile communi- 
ties, usually either actual nomads or societies which have 
but recently emerged from a pastoral mode of life, or they 
may be a seafaring folko In any case, while they prey upon 
the settled population and overlord them, they take care 
not to exterminate them, for the descendants of herdsmen 
despise agriculture, and it is only after a long time and due 
to a powerful constraint that they yield to the force of cir- 
cumstances and till the soil. 

The horse - breeding, chariot - driving, Celtic - speaking 
peoples who invaded the British Islands were probably no 

' G. L. Gomme, The Village Coninuinity, i8go, ch. iv. ; Ethnology in Folk^ 
lore, 1892, p. 70. 



■'y 



40 THE STUDY OF MAN 

exception to this general rule. It is certain that they tilled 
the soil, for there are many allusions in Roman authors to 
this practice among allied tribes on the mainland of Europe; 
but the same authors are careful to point out how lightly 
these half-nomad tribes were attached to the soil, and how 
they were continually on the move. We may therefore 
take it for granted that these men of the Bronze Age over- 
lorded, but did not by any means exterminate the indige- 
nous population of Britain ; the latter by becoming the serfs 
of the conquerors were still more firmly settled on the land. 

Later came the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed, dolichocephals. 
At first pioneers opened up the country and showed the 
way to the Teutonic hordes, who arrived in various swarms 
of Frisians, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, and the kindred 
Norsemen. The story of the incoming of the Bronze Age 
was repeated, but with this difference. While the fair doli- 
chocephals slipped over, as it were, the dark dolichocephalic 
serfs, they largely exterminated or pushed before them the 
Celtic, more or less brachycephalic peoples, so that these 
are at the present day mainly to be found in the western 
portions of the country. The mixed race probably shared 
the fate of the more aboriginal population. 

In a recently published book,' on the Formation of the 
French Nation, De Mortillet points out that various classical 
authors practically all agree in describing the Celts or Gauls 
and the Germans in the same terms. Tall, fair people, with 
blue eyes, white skin, very warlike, and readily undertaking 
great invasions and vast migrations, constructing neither 
temples nor towns, fighting naked, but very proud of their 
hair. Below this military aristocracy there were the com- 
mon people, ignored by the writers, who constituted the 
patient and laborious democracy fixed to the soil, the true 
natives of the country, whom anthropology and palethnol- 

' G. de Mortillet, Forviation de la Nation Fran^aise, Paris, i8q7. 



HAIR AND EYE COLOUR 4I 

ogy have revealed. The Gallo-Germanic race is spread over 
nearly the whole of Europe, and extends into Africa and 
Asia, each band transporting its particular name to the dif- 
ferent countries that it occupied, [it is this turbulent, noisy, 
mobile aristocracy which alone has filled the pages of history. 
In France the short, dark, brachycephal of Southern Central 
Europe has fused with, or lived alongside of, the dark doli- 
chocephal, and it is this mixture which has formed the mass 
of the French people, that sedentary population which may 
be described as the nucleus of the French democracy. 

Although not identically the same, the early history of 
France and that of the British Islands have much in com- 
mon, and it is interesting to find that these primitive ethnic 
movements are still painted, as it were, on the hair and in 
the eyes of the existing population. 

On turning to France we find that analogous results have 
there been tabulated. Topinard, the distinguished anthro- 
pologist, instituted a very extensive inquiry relative to the 
statistical distribution of the colours of the hair and eyes 
of the adult population of France. 

In order to obtain unity of method, and to reduce the 
personal equation to a minimum, Topinard issued precise 
instructions with colour-scales, which were scattered broad- 
cast, but mainly to trained observers, preferably to medical 
men. More than 200,000 observations were returned ; these 
were abstracted one by one, and classified by departments 
according to place of birth. The first operation was to re- 
duce the totals of each kind of hair and eyes to the percent- 
age of the whole number of the cases observed for each 
department. The second operation was to arrange the 
most blond to the darkest departments for both hair and 
eyes, in a long list from one to eighty-eight. The third 
operation was to combine these lists in various ways, so as 
to determine the relative places occupied by each depart- 



42 THE STUDY OF MAN 

ment with regard to the eyes and hair separately. The 
fourth operation was to again combine these results, so as 
to arrive at the main synthetic conclusions. There only 
remained to establish equal groupings, and to plot out the 
maps according to these lists. Topinard informs us ^ that 
he employed various methods till he finally drew up twenty- 
one maps presenting all the main facts, from the simplest, 
giving the distribution of blue eyes, for example, to the 
most synthetic which combined all the observations. Five 
of these maps were originally published in his report to the 
meeting of the French Association for the Advancement of 
Science, which was held in Paris in 1889.^ My learned col- 
league has kindly permitted me to borrow the three that he 
has also published in his U Homme dans la Nature, 

The eighty-eight departments, including Alsace-Lorraine 
and Corsica, are divided into four groups of twenty-two de- 
partments each. The groups indicate the fair, intermediate 
fair, intermediate dark, and dark, whether of eyes, of hair, 
or of both combined. 

The line of separation between the departments where the 
blonds predominate, and those which have a preponderance 
of darks, extends irregularly from the Alps to the Breton 
peninsula. This line also corresponds with a fair degree of 
accuracy to that which separates the people of high stature 
from those of low stature, the former being to the north- 
east, the latter to the south-west. 

The maximum of frequency of blonds is met with partly 
along the shores of the English Channel and partly along 
the north-east frontier. This fact coincides with history. 

■ P. Topinard, V Ilomine dans la N attire, i8gi, p. 83. 

-p. Topinard, " Statislique de la Couleur des Veux et des Cheveux en 
France." — Assoc. Ff'an^aise pour rAvance. des Sc/., Paris, iSSg (1890), 2nde 
Parte, p. 615. 



HAIR AND EYE COLOUR 



43 



(One knows that the blonds came by sea and by land, but 
always from the north^ It is also in agreement with the 
colour-maps constructed from statistics of the hair and eye 
colours of over ten million school children in Germany, 



t:.'-:N\'-J 



22 DEP"" PLUS CUAIRS 

22 . INTERMEDIAIRES CLAIRS 

22 

22 



PLUS FONCEIS 




Fig. 5. 
Distribution of the Colour of the Eyes in France ; from Topinard. The 
eighty-eight Departments (Alsace-Lorraine added and counted as one) 
are divided into four equal groups. 

Austria, Belgium, and Switzerland. 'The fairest children 
occur in the north, and, speaking in general terms, they 
darken as one proceeds south and west ; thus the (darkest 
children are to be found on the confines of Italy and France^ 
There are, however, several dark " islands " in Central Ger- 



44 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



many, especially in Bohemia, and numerous light " islands " 
in the extreme south of this large area. 

The maximum of frequency of the darks is seen along the 
Mediterranean coast, in Corsica, along the Pyrenees, and 










Fig. 6. 

Distribution of the Colour of the Hair in France ; from Topinard. The 
eighty-eight Departments are divided into four equal groups. 

also in Auvergne. This conforms perfectly to what is 
known of the primitive location of a dark population in the 
basin and islands of the Mediterranean before the Aryan 
invasion. From other sources we know that there was a 
mixed dark population in France before the fair barbarians 



HAIR AXD EYE COLOUR 



45 



came from the north-east to overlord the earlier inhabitants 
of France ; but colour maps alone do not serve to distinguish 
between these earlier peoples. A further analysis will be 



made when dealing with head-form 



[ TTT! ^ 



11 DEP^' PLUS BLONDS 

22 .. INTELRMEDIAIRES BLONDS 
22 .. - H BRUNS 

22 . PLUS BRuNS 



Vh^ 



X 






20 



^x./t 



V. 



) 



2 r— ^-'-^i^^ '0 ,>^..- 










Fig. 7. 
Resultant of the Two Preceding Maps ; from Topinard. 

The map of combined hair and eye colours marks the 
descent of the fair invaders down the valley of the Rhone, 
in the direction of Upper Italy. Other irregularities of dis- 
tribution and the various " islands," such as the depart- 
ments of Vendee (75) and Charente-Inferieure (36) in the 
west. Tarn (54) and Tarn et Garonne (59) in the south, and 



4.6 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Jura (8) and Drome (22) in the east, can be explained by 
local historical events. Topinard asks whether the fair 
" island " of Charente-Inferieure is due to the English, to 
the Protestants around La Rochelle (the majority of whom 
should be fair), or to the immigration of the Alans ? The 
Alans, or Alani, were Scythian people, with red hair and 
grey eyes, who joined themselves with the Vandals. They 
occupied the middle course of the Loire in 451 A.D.^ Col- 
lignon, however, does not find Charente-Inferieure particu- 
larly fair, and he cannot satisfy himself that any trace 
exists of the Alans, about whom we know really very little. 
Topinard fully recognises that the departments are purely 
administrative divisions which have no ethnological signifi- 
cance, but it is very convenient to take the departments as 
statistical units, as they are of a sufficient size to give the 
broad features of the distribution of hair and eye colour- 
ation. The significance of the distribution has, of course, 
no relation whatever to the departments themselves. Here 
also, as in Britain, a more detailed survey in selected dis- 
tricts will give most interesting and suggestive results, the 
interpretation of which can best be worked out by a careful 
study of the local history, both prehistoric and documental. 
For France such detailed anthropological investigations have 
been carried out by Dr. R. CoUignon in a very thorough 
and suggestive manner. His methods are so valuable that 
a chapter will be devoted to an abstract of his studies in the 
Dordogne district. 

* G. de Mortillet, Formation de la Nation Francaise, i8g7, p, 122. 



CHAPTER III 

VALUE OF HEAD-FORM IN ANTHROPOLOGY 

SO much attention has been paid by anthropologists to the 
shape of the head, and particularly to that of the skull, 
that the greater part of the literature of physical anthro- 
pology is taken up with minutely descriptive and statistical 
accounts of the contours and measurements of skulls. 

It is obvious enough why the ^uU has been so minutely 
studied. Although most parts of the human skeleton 
exhibit distinctive traits by which they can be readily dis- 
tinguished from the bones of other animals, the more char- 
acteristic human tendencies are, however, so to speak, 
focussed in the skull. For example, the bones of the legs 
and the pelvis have become modified owing to the assump- 
tion of the erect attitude; but the position of the large hole 
(the foramen magnum) in the base of the skull, through 
which the spinal cord passes into the brain, and the balancing 
of the head on the vertebral column, attest to the same fact. 

The acquisition of the erect attitude liberated the hand 
from progression, and this gave it the chance to become the 
delicate and mobile mechanism that we now possess, and 
which is especially marked in the case of musicians, artists, 
and skilled workmen. The " handiness " of the hand re- 
lieved the jaws from much of the work that they were wont 
to do, and as a consequence the human jaw has a marked 
tendency to be reduced in size. 

47 



48 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Thus two very characteristic human traits, the erect 
posture and the hand, have influenced the skull. 

The other essentially human characteristics are mainly 
to be found in the head itself; of these the most important 
is the brain. iThe absolute and relative large size of the 
brain at once separates the brain of man from that of the 
higher apes. This character can be determined from an 
examination of the skull without any special anatomical 
knowledge. 

It is convenient in considering the skull to distinguish 
between the cranium, or brain case, and the face. The latter 
is composed of the organs of sight and hearing, with their 
protective casings, and the jaws. 

The cranium and the face can, to a certain extent, be 
studied independently of each other, though there is always 
a distinct relation between them, and the one acts upon the 
other in various ways. 

•Among the lower races of men we find that the jaws are 
usually of large size, and they often project far beyond the 
level of the forehead. A skull in this condition is called 
** prognathous," " a term which has been rendered," as 
Huxley points out, " with more force than elegance, by the 
Saxon equivalent — ' snouty. * " ' An example of this prog- 
nathism is seen in the negro's skull (Fig. 8, No. 4). 

^hese great jaws are associated with large teeth and 
powerful muscles. The jaw or masseter muscles arise from 
the side walls of the skull, and are inserted in the lower jaw. 
The more powerful the muscles the higher they creep up the 
sides of the skull, their upward limit being marked by a 
curved line (the temporal crest), and the more they are likely 
to compress the skull, especially immediately behind the 
orbits. This lateral compression of the temporal region of 

' T. H. Huxley, "Man's Place in Nature: III. On Some Fossil Remains 
of Man," Collected Essays, vol. vii , p. 191. 



VALUE OF HEAD-FORM IN ANTHROPOLOGY 49 

the skull would naturally be most effective in quite young 
persons when the skull was still pliable. The feeding on 
coarse food and the absence or imperfection of cooking the 
food would give more work for the jaws, and consequently 
the muscles would become more powerful. One effect of 
civilisation is to improve the commissariat and cuisine, and 
as a result the jaws become smaller, and project less and 
less beyond the level of the forehead, that is, they become 
" orthognathous. " The teeth are reduced in size and num- 
ber, and the masseter muscles having less work to do become 
smaller and less powerful, and consequently they exert less 
pressure on the side walls of the cranium, and so the skulls 
are not so narrow, especially in front. 

That the jaw muscles do affect the skull has been shown 
by Nehring,' who, from his studies on skulls of both sexes 
and of various ages of anthropoid apes and of dogs of differ- 
ent breeds, is of the opinion that the occurrence of a con- 
striction between the orbital and cerebral portions of the 
skull has direct relation to the strength of the facial muscu- 
lature, and more especially of the jaw muscles. If the skull 
of a muscular Eskimo dog be compared with that of a pug 
or a Bolognese lap-dog, it will be found that this constriction 
is very marked in the Eskimo dog, the zygomatic arches of 
which are widely outstanding, and all the muscular attach- 
ments strongly developed; but the constriction is scarcely 
noticeable in the pug, and is entirely wanting in the 
Bolognese lap-dog; the two latter exhibit feminine rounded 
forms of the corresponding parts of the skull, with a fully- 
developed musculature. In domesticated dogs, as in civilised 
man, the jaw is relatively fully developed, and there is a 
tendency to reduction of the last molar tooth. 

^ A. Nehring, " Menschenreste aus einem Sambaqui von Santos in Brasilien 
unter Vergleichung der Fossilreste des Pithecanthropus erectus, Dubois," Ver- 
handl. Berliner ant h. Gese//sc/i.,iSg^-b. 



50 THE STUDY OF MAN 

It must not be overlooked that the decrease of the action 
of the jaw muscles is concomitant with rise in culture, that 
is, to increased mental activity, which is usually associated 
with increase in the volume of the brain. We have already 
seen that the statistics collected in the anthropometric 
laboratory in the University of Cambridge, as worked out 
by Venn and by Galton, show that the period of the growth 
of the brain is prolo nged in students, as opposed to those 
of corresponding ages who cease to study. 

It may be accepted as true in the main that the increase 
in the size of the brain, which is due to culture, is exhibited 
proportionately more in the breadth and height than in the 
len_gth. 

iThus culture may act in two ways on the skull; directly, 
by enlarging the volume of the brain, and therefore increas- 
ing the size of the skull; and indirectly, by causing a reduc- 
tion of the jaw, which reacts again upon the skull. One is 
not surprised, then, to find that the higher races have, as a 
rule, a greater breadth in the anterior temporal region of 
the skull than the lower races. 

The decrease in the size of the jaws and of the strength 
of their muscles induces a corresponding modification in the 
rest of the face. The action of the lower jaw upon the 
upper may be likened to the beating of a hammer on an 
anvil. When the jaw muscles are powerful the lower jaw is 
brought with a considerable force against the upper jaw, 
and consequently the arches which connect the upper jaw 
with the cranium must be proportionately well developed. 
Conversely the weakening of the jaw muscles permits, for 
example, the outer rim of the orbit and the zygomatic arch 
to be of a more delicate construction. 

The increase of the brain causes the forehead to be at the 
same time broader and higher. This fact was noted by the 
sculptors of ancient Greece, and they increased the vertical 



VALUE OF HEAD-FORM IN ANTHROPOLOGY 5 I 

height of the forehead of some of their gods, so that, as in 
the case of Zeus, this human character was carried by them 
beyond human Hmits, when they wished to emphasise the 
benevolence and mental superiority of the Father of gods 
and men. 

KVhen at an indoor gathering we see a number of men 
with their hats off we notice that their heads vary in form. 
Some are small, others large; some have long heads, others 
have short ones ; the head may be high or low, and the con- 
tours vary in diverse ways. These differences render the 
study of craniology peculiarly difficult, as it is almost im- 
possible to describe most of them at the same time succinctly 
and intelligibly, and also because innumerable combinations 
of variable elements may occur in a collection of skulls from 
a single district. 

(Dr. D. G. Brinton, the well-known American anthropolo- 
gist, has been so impressed with the latter fact, that he de- 
spairs of the study of craniology throwing any certain light 
on the racial problems of anthropology. Undoubtedly 
an immense amount of tedious labour has been expended by 
enthusiastic students on the study and description of skulls, 
but often, one must confess, with very meagre results. 
There certainly is a wonderful fascination in skulls ; and 
craniology, which to the outside observer appears to be 
about as uninteresting a subject as could well be conceived, 
has lured its votaries to more and more persistent and pains- 
taking effort. The present writer, who once sat in the 
seat of the scornful, has also yielded to the charming of 
craniology. 

A very strong argument in favour of craniology is the 
assistance that it should render to prehistoric archaeology 
and to the history of peoples. We have documentary and 
legendary records of the shifting of populations, and our 
archaeological museums are full of interesting records of the 



52 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



past. It would be a matter of great importance if the skulls 
that are exhumed could also be brought in as evidence. 

We are again face to face with the question that con- 
fronted us when considering the colour of the eyes and hair. 
1 2 




Fig. 8. 

Upper and Side Views of a Kalmuk's and of a Negro's Skull ; 

after Ranke. 

(^an one particular head-form, or a restricted number of 
head-forms, be regarded as characteristic of a race or con- 
sanguineous group f) And are these characters sufficiently 
constant to be of scientific value ? 



VALUE OF HEAD-FORM IN ANTHROPOLOGY 53 

Before we can attempt to answer these two questions, it 
will be necessary to give a brief account of the methods and 
nomenclature of craniometry. Fortunately, a very short 
description will serve the present purpose, as we are con- 
cerned with only one or two aspects of the subject, and not 
with craniology as a whole. 

On looking at a number of skulls from above, it is seen 
that they are all longer than broad, though some are less so 
than others, and that the contour is very varied. Some 
may have somewhat fiat sides, others have gently rounded 
sides, or the skull may appear narrow in front and swollen 
behind ; indeed, there may be great variation in this respect 
even in skulls which have the same relation of breadth to 
length. Skulls must also be looked at from the front, side, 
back, and underneath, and their peculiarities noted. 

The character which is most frequently recorded is the 
ratio of the breadth of the skull to its length. One speaks 
loosely of a long or a narrow, or of a short or round skull, 
but such vague descriptions are of no scientific value. An- 
thropologists now adopt the plan of calculating indices 
which accurately express this numerical relation. The ex- 
treme length and breadth of a skull are measured, the 
breadth is multiplied by one hundred, and the total is 
divided by the length ; the result is the cranial index. 

Breadth X 100 ^ , 

= index. 

Length. 

In other words the length is reduced to one hundred, and 
the ratio of the breadth to that is the index. 

The altitudinal index is the ratio of the height either to 
the length or to the breadth. 

Height X TOO ^ , Heisfht X 100 .. , 

^ = Index. — -^ — = Index. 

Length. Breadth. 



54 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Directions for taking these measurements will be found 
in the chapter dealing with practical instructions. 

There are numerous facial measurements from which 
various indices are obtained, but these do not concern us at 
present. 

The cranial index is usually grouped into three series; a 
skull is said to be dolichocephalic when its index does not 
exceed 75, to be mesaticephalic between 75 and 80, and to 
be brachycephalic when over 80. Some investigators who 
aim at great exactness increase the range in the following 
manner: 

Ultra-dolichocephalic 60-64.9 

Hyper-dolichocephalic 65-69.9 

Dolichocephalic 70-74.9 

Mesaticephalic 75~79-9 

Brachycephalic 80-84.9 

Hyper-brachycephalic 85-89.9 

Ultra-brachycephalic 90-94.9 

There is a tendency in some quarters to extend dolicho- 
cephaly up to 77.9, so as to reduce mesaticephaly to the 
narrow range of 78 to 80. 

If we take a general survey of the races of mankind, we 
find that they can be arranged in a manner by taking the 
mean cranial index of each of the following groups. In all 
cases the numbers vary about this mean ; but where a people 
is known or presumed to be fairly pure the range of varia- 
tion is much less than where mixture is known to have 
occurred. 

At the first glance it appears as if the cranial indices were 
too generally distributed over the world to prove of much 
ethnographical or historical value. This is perfectly true if 
these indices are considered by themselves. It is only when 
taken into consideration with other physical characters that 
the cranial index is of any value whatever. 



VALUE OF HEAD-FORM IN ANTHROPOLOGY 



55 





DOLICHOCEPHALS. 


MESATICEPHALS. 


BRACHYCEPHALS. 


bi 

o 
ill 


Sardinians | 

Sicilians f " ' ' '^^ 74 

Scandinavians 74 

S. Italians 75 


Scandinavians 76 

British. 76-77 

Spanish Basques. . . 76 

Parisians 79 

Prussians 79 


Finns 80 

French Basques. ... 80 

S. Germans 83 

Auvergnats 84 

Lapps 85 




Veddahs 72 

Ainus 72-76 

Dravidians 74 


P^'^^^^ \ .... 77-78 
Japanese \ '' ' 

Parsees 78 


Koreans 81 


< 


Negritoes 80-82 

Mongols ) 

Kirgis )- 85-86 

Kalmuks ) 

Burmese 86 


< 

< 


Soudanese 71 

Negroes 73 

Katirs ) „ 

Berbers f '^ 

Arabs 74 

Bushmen 75 


Negrilloes 1A~11 

Copts 76 

Hausas 77 

\'^r \ 78 

Boulous \ ' 
Adoumas 80 




< 

< 

U 
O 


Fijians, interior.. . . 66 

Australians 70 

Admiralty Isl'ds. 70-73 
N. W. Papuans 72 


Polynesians .... 75-80 

Tasmanians 76 

Dyaks 77 


Javanese 80-82 

Polynesians .... 82-87 
Tongans 84 


< 

y 
5 
u 
s 
< 


Eskimo 70-72 

Fuegans 72-76 

Patagonians 74 

Botocudos 74 


Hurons 75 

Californians. 77 

Caribs 75-3o 


?^a^T' \ 82-86 

Apaches ) 

Alaskans 83 

Araucanians. . . . 83-85 

Aleouts. 86 



The inhabitants of large areas of Asia are distinctly bra- 
chycephalic, but among the mixed peoples of China and 
Japan mesaticephalism is prevalent. In the northern parts 
of the latter country one finds the remarkable Ainus or 
Ainos, who differ in so many respects from their Japanese 
neighbours and conquerors. These very interesting people 
were formerly much more numerous than they are at present ; 



56 THE STUDY OF MAN 

they probably occupied the whole or the greater part of the 
Japanese Archipelago, and also considerable tracts of the 
mainland opposite. They are short — the men range from 
about 1545 mm. (5 ft. j in.), to 1600 mm. (5 ft. 3 in.); the 
women are some 75 mm. (3 inches) shorter. The colour of 
their skin, though of various shades of brown, has a reddish 
tinge, and more resembles that of a Southern European 
than an Asiatic ; the coarse black hair is long and wavy, and 
is so profusely developed that the Ainus are the hairiest of 
mankind. From a careful consideration of all the facts, De 
Quatrefages ^ comes to the conclusion that ** the Ainus are 
fundamentally a white and dolichocephalic ^ race, more or 
less altered by other ethnic elements, of which one, at least, 
is essentially Mongolic. " 

In India there are two main groups of people — the tall, 
comparatively fair, dolichocephalic Aryan invaders, and the 
short, dark, also dolichocephalic aboriginal population. The 
latter are usually spoken of under the general name of 
Dravidians (Plate 2, Fig. i). These dark-skinned people, 
with abundant black wavy hair, are probably distantly allied 
to the Melanochroi or dark group of the Southern European 
(or Mediterranean) stock on the one hand, and to the Aus- 
tralians on the other. 

The cousins Sarasin have brought forward evidence to 
prove that the Veddahs of Ceylon are the least modified 
descendants of that " Proto-Dravidian " race from which 
the diverse people just mentioned have diverged. 

The typical Asiatic race, the yellow-skinned brachy- 
cephals, are scarcely represented in India, and there only at 
the northern and eastern frontiers of Bengal. In fact, one 
would scarcely be wrong in saying that, ethnologically 

' Histoire G^nerak des Races Humaines, 1889, p. 467. 

"^ The mean cephalic index of ninety-five Ainu men was 77.3, and that of 
seventy-one women was 78.4. 



VALUE OF HEAD-FORM IN ANTHROPOLOGY 57 

speaking, India is more " European " and less " Asiatic " 
than Lapland. 

Amongst the brachycephalic Asiatics are to be found the 
Negritoes. So far as their cranial index is concerned it is 
practically identical with that of the average Japanese, who 
may be regarded as very characteristic Mongoloids; but 
when one compares their other physical traits it is at once 
apparent that we are dealing with two entirely different 
races. The Negritoes comprise the Mincopies, or natives 
of the Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, certain hill 
tribes of the Malay Peninsula, such as the Semangs, Sakais,^ 
and Senois, and the Aetas of the Philippines. We will take 
the Andamanese, as they have been most fully studied, and 
compare them with an average Japanese type." 

ANDAMANESE. JAPANESE. 

Av. stature, males 1431 mm. (4 ft. 8.3 in.) 1650 mm. (5 ft. 5 in.) 

Colour of skin Sooty black. Yellowish. 

Hair Black, short, frizzly. Black, long, straight. 

Cranial capacity 1281 cc. (male). 1605. 

Cranial index 81. i. 80.4. 

|The stature, colour of the skin, nature of the hair, and 
the cranial capacity are all anthropological characters of the 
first rank, and therefore it is needless to enter more fully 
into the details of the other external or cranial characters. 
It is sufficient to state that the Andamanese has an infantile 
cast of countenance, and though he is related to the African 
Negro on the one hand, and to the Melanesian on the other, 
yet the common features of these people are, as it were, 
blurred and softened in " our little Andamanese fellow- 

^ The Sakais were probably of Negrito origin, but they have since become 
greatly modified. 

^ A. de Quatrefages et E. T. Hamy, Crania Ethnica : Les Crdnes des Races 
Humaines, 1882, p. 430. 



58 THE STUDY OF MAN 

subjects," who, in the words of Sir William Flower/ are 
probably the least modified descendants of the primitive 
members of the great branch of the human species charac- 
terised by their black skins and frizzly hair." He, how- 
ever, is careful to point out that " some characters, as the 
brachycephaly, seem special to the race." 

The Kalmuk, with his broad face, high cheek bones, 
prominent brow ridges, narrow eye openings, and well- 
marked falciform fold in the inner angle of the eye, flat 
sunken nose with circular nostrils, and somewhat promi- 
nent jaws, combines the distinctive characters of a typical 
Mongolian. 

Without going into details which would be out of place 
here, we find that the representatives of the three main 
groups of mankind are to be found in Asia. These three 
groups, whose characters have been so admirably defined 
by Sir William Flower in his presidential address to the 
Anthropological Institute in 1885, are^: 

1. The Ethiopian, Negroid, or Melanesian, or " black " 
type. 

2. The Mongolian, or Xanthous, or " yellow " type. 

3. The Caucasian, or " white " type. 

(The American, or ** red," type is regarded by some as a 
distinct group equivalent to the other three. 

If one classifies mankind by the character of the hair, it 
is found that the Negroid peoples all have frizzly hair, that 
which is often called ''woolly." The Caucasians^ have 

^ W. H. Flower, " The Pygmy Races of Men," Proceedings Royal Inst. Gt. 
Brit., 1888; and Journ. Anth. Inst., xviii., 1888, p. 73. Cf. also W. H. 
Flower, " On the Osteology and Affinities of the Natives of the Andaman 
Islands," Journ. Anth. Inst., ix., 1879, P- ^^^ J ^"*^ y^^v., 1884, p. 115. 

'^ W. H. Flower, " The Classification of the Varieties of the Human Species," 
yourn. Anth. hist., xiv., 1885, p. 378. 

^ J. S. Stuart-Glennie proposes the name of flypenetian ("the bearded 
men") for the Caucasian: the latter term is open to several objections, while 



VALUE OF HE AD- FORM IN ANTHROPOLOGY 59 

curly or wavy hair, and the Mongohans and Americans 
have straight hair. 

According to this grouping the main races of man would 
be classified as follows : 

UlotrichI: — Frizzly black hair, black skin, essentialljr 
dolichocephalic. 

The Negroes, Bantus, Bushmen, and Negrilloes of 
Africa. The Negritoes of Asia and the Melanesians 
of the West Pacific. 

Cymotrichi : — Wavy hair of all shades, skin colour white 
to black, dolicho-, mesati-, and brachycephalic. 

The Xanthochroi (or fair "whites") of North 
Europe, and the Melanochroi (or dark "whites") 
of South Europe, with the Semites, Hamites, Dravid- 
ians, Australians, Ainus, and possibly the Polynes- 
ians. 

Leiotrichi : — Straight black hair, skin colour yellowish to 
brown, essentially brachycephalic. 

Most of the inhabitants of Asia (excluding India, 
Persia, etc.) and the American Indians. 

Asia thus possesses several very primitive stocks. The 
Andamanese, stated by Flower to be the scarcely modified 
descendants of an extremely ancient race, the ancestors of all 
the Negroid tribes. The Veddahs are claimed by the Sara- 
sins to be one of the primitive types of humanity; during 
its evolution this primitive type was transformed in one 
direction in India into the Dravidian type without the as- 

the new name gives expression to the fact that these people are characterised 
by possessing full beards, a feature that is well marked in the Ainu, Australian, 
and Dravidian. It is certainly a misnomer to call the black Australians and 
Dravidians members of the "white" race. Lucy M. J. Garnett and J. S. 
Stuart-Glennie, Greek Folk Poesy, i., 1896, p. 14a. 



6o THE STUD V OF MAN 

sistance of mixture ; whilst in the other direction it gave 
rise to the Australian type. The Mongolian type, which 
arose and speciahsed in the heart of the continent, is uni- 
versally regarded as the characteristic Asiatic race. As 
Mongolic tribes have, at various periods, made inroads into 
Europe, so fair and dark European peoples have, from time 
to time, invaded and colonised Asia. 

A few remarks must_be made on the important question 
of racial uniformity. Sir William Flower has expressed the 
opinion that there are few people whose physical characters 
offer a more interesting subject of investigation to the 
anthropologist than the native inhabitants of the Andaman 
Islands. Purity of type, due to freedom from mixture with 
all other races for an extremely long period, owing to their 
isolated position and their inveterate hostility to all intrud- 
ers on their shores, and exemplified in their uniformity of 
physical characteristics, is to be found among them, perhaps 
in a more complete degree than in any other group of man- 
kind. That a certain admixture from other races, occa- 
sioned by intentional visits, or accidental wrecking of vessels 
on their coasts, and absorption of some portion of foreign 
element thus derived into the native population may have 
taken place from time to time, cannot be denied, but it is 
questionable whether this has been sufficient to affect 
materially the physical characters of the majority. The 
most recent and carefully-made observations, especially 
when supported by osteological and photographic evidence, 
tend to confirm the view that a striking uniformity of type 
is prevalent among the Andamanese. Some travellers and 
even residents have, however, remarked on differences of 
type. Flower speaks of the " wonderful similarity " of a 
large series of crania that were before him; ** the skeleton 
of the face of the Andamanese is even more characteristic 
and uniform in appearance than that of the cranium." 



VALUE OF HEAD-FORM IN ANTHROPOLOGY 6 1 

The same fact has been noticed in other places, and for 
various peoples where isolation has occurred. We may 
therefore take it for granted that there is a considerable per- 
manence of type under certain conditions. On the other 
hand all biologists admit that evolution has and does occur 
wherever there is life, but the process is extremely variable 
in its rate, nor can its direction be predicated. There are 
numerous examples in palaeontology and zoology of a per- 
sistence of type that is simply astounding. 

What applies to lower forms of life must hold good for 
man, but the problem is complicated by the presence of 
other factors. An isolated group of organisms in a uniform 
environment is much less liable to modification, that is, to 
evolution, than one which is subjected to varying conditions 
of existence. 

The purer, that is, the more uniform, the group, the less 
will be the tendency to vary. 

A combination of a pure group, or of a homogeneous 
mixture, and of an isolated area with uniform conditions is 
certainly conducive to fixity of type. The converse is con- 
ducive to variability of type and therefore to evolution. 
The Mincopies and the Andaman Islands may be taken as 
a good exam.ple of the former condition, and the British and 
the British Isles of the latter. 

The cranial indices of a few European peoples have been 
arranged in the following table : 

TABLE OF AVERAGE CRANIAL INDICES OF EUROPEANS. 
(compiled from several sources.) 

Neolithic man of S. France. . 73 ^ 

Sardinians and SiciHans. ... 73-74 I 

c^n«^;«o„;ov,o c r Dolichocephals. 

bcandinavians 74~76 

South Italians 75 



62 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



> Mesaticephals. 



> Brachycephals. 



Spanish Basques 76 

Guanches •. 75~77 

Slavs of the Danube 76 

English and Scots 76-77 

Roumanians 78 

Prussians 79 

Modern Parisians 79 

French Basques 80 

Finns 80 

North Italians 81 

Bretons 81 

Russians 82 

South Germans 83 

Savoyards and Auvergnats. . . 84 

Bavarians 85 

Lapps 85 



Even a slight scrutiny will show that the distribution of 
the cranial indices in modern Europe is not so casual as it 
appears at first sight. 

1. In the extreme north the Lapps and the Finns are 
brachycephalic. 

2. North Europe, including the British Islands, Holland, 
North Germany, and Scandinavia, is mesaticephalic, but 
inclining to dolichocephaly. 

3. Central Europe, stretching from Central France through 
Switzerland and North Italy, Southern Germany, and into 
the Balkan Peninsula, is brachycephalic. 

4. Southern Europe, including the Iberian Peninsula, 
Southern Italy, the Western Mediterranean Islands, and the 
northern shores of Africa, is dolichocephalic, with a tend- 
ency to mesaticephaly. 

We can thus broadly distinguish four zones of cranial in- 
dices which may also be correlated with other physical 
characters. 



VALUE OF HEAD-FORM IN ANTHROPOLOGY 63 

1. The Northern Brachycephals are short and dark. 

2. The Northern Dolichocephals and Mesaticephals are 
tall and fair. 

3. The Central Brachycephals are short and dark. 

4. The Southern Dolichocephals are short and dark. 

We may now take a very brief survey of the main con- 
clusions, which Dr. Beddoe has arrived at after many years 
of careful study of European craniology, concerning the 
history of the cranial index in the British Islands. 

IjWhat palaeolithic man was like, who roamed in the ancient 
river valleys along with the mammoth and other extinct 
animals, we have no positive information, but a gradually 
increasing amount of evidence tends to the conclusion that 
he belonged to the race of which the well-known crania of 
Neanderthal, Spy, GrJley Hill, etc., are examples] There 
is no reason to believe that he became extinct. Beddoe be- 
lieves that the posterity of these makers of rudely chipped 
flint implements still survive in these islands. After con- 
siderable changes in the physical geography of our islands, 
and the disappearance of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, 
cave bear, and other ancient forms, a new race of men ap- 
peared in Britain who made finely chipped implements, 
many of which were beautifully polished; they, too, knew 
how to make pottery and had domestic animals. The men 
of the Neolithic Age had long skulls, and they buried their 
dead in long barrows. This race resembled that which is 
now known under the name of Baumes-Chaudes or l Homme - 
Mort, from the sepulchral caverns in the Department of 
Lozere. The average cranial index of this race is 72 ; the 
average of the Long Barrow race is also about J2. Traces 
of these people have been found from the north of Scotland 
to the south of England, but we are not authorised to state 
that this race was spread throughout the whole of Great 



64 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Britain. There are, as a matter of fact, whole counties, 
such as Northumberland, Avhere there are, so far as Beddoe * 
is aware, no traces of this race. 

The skulls from the caves of Perth-y-chwaren in North 
Wales, which were disinterred by Boyd-Dawkins and 
figured by him, differ considerably from the common British 
Neolithic type, not merely in breadth, but in physiognomy. 
The cranial index of this type is 76.5, and it may be related 
to the French Mesaticephalic race of Furfooz. 

/Britain was next invaded by a race which introduced 
bronze implements. It was robust and tall, not less than 
five feet nine inches (1752 mm.) in stature, bony, large- 
brained, harsh-featured, high-nosed, with prominent brows, 
and a breadth index of over 80. The majority probably 
had light hair. They resembled the Borreby race of Den- 
mark, and the Swiss or Helvetian race of ancient Switzerland, 
though with somewhat larger breadth. The modern Wal- 
loons of Southern Belgium have some afifinities to this type. 
Dr. Beddoe further states that this race may have come 
from Denmark, or from the north of France, or from Bel- 
gium ; and it may have brought with it the Celtic language. 

The immigrants who introduced bronze into Britain 
usually buried their dead chieftains in round barrows, hence 
they are often termed the Round Barrow race. In Plate 
I., Figs. 4-6, we have a good example of a skull of this race. 
It is interesting, however, to note that this specimen was 
actually obtained from a long barrow. It did not occur, like 
the skull of the other race (Figs. 1-3), on the ground in the 
centre of a barrow, but was excavated from a depth of two 
feet from the surface; that is, it is what is called a " second- 
ary interment, "thus proving that the newcomers occasionally 
made use of the barrows of their predecessors. 

' J. Beddoe, " Sur I'Histoire de I'lndice cephalique dans les lies Britan- 
niques," L Anthropologie , v., 1894, pp. 513, 658. 



Plate I. 




Fig. I. 



Fig. 2. 



Upper, Front, and Side Views of Skulls of the Long and Round Barrow Races , 
photographed by the Author from specimens in the Cambridge Anatomical 
Museum. 

Fig. I.— Long Barrow, Dinnington, Rotherham. Length, 204 ; breadth, 143 ; cran. index, 70.1 ; 
ht.-length index, 70.1 ; ht.-br. index, 100 ; orb. index, 87.2 ; nas. index, 42 ; capacity, 1755 ; 
male. 

Fig. 2. — Skull of a man of the Round Barrow Race, from a secondary interment, two feet 
below the surface, in a long- barrow, Winterbourne Stoke. Length, 177; breadth, 156; 
cran. index, 88.1 ; orb. index, 87.5; nas. index, 49.1. 



VALUE OF HEAD-FORM IN ANTHROPOLOGY 65 

Dr. Beddoe does not appear to recognise the possibility of 
the presence in the British Islands of the Neolithic brachy- 
cephals of France. I have recently ' expressed myself as 
follows : 

*^ I am inclined to think that the Neolithic brachycephals of 
Central Europe did come over to the British Islands, and that 
traces of them are still to be seen, perhaps more frequently in 
Ireland than in Great Britain. If this be so, it is probable they 
came as a mixed people, that mixture of brachycephals and 
southern dolichocephals which Broca called ' Celts,' for it must 
be remembered that he regarded theCeltaeof Caesar as a mixed peo- 
ple, but mainly brachycephals. The Neolithic brachycephalic 
immigrants into Western Europe almost certainly came from 
Eastern Europe, and possibly originally from Asia; it is also 
probable that they were primitively of the same stock as the 
Lapps and Finns, or rather one constituent of the latter people. 
It may be that the short, dark, brachycephalic element in the 
British Islands was largely due to the northern brachycephals 
who came direct from Scandinavia in the Neolithic period, or 
both northern and southern brachycephals may have contributed 
their respective shares." 

The period of the Roman domination is considered by 
Beddoe to have somewhat diminished the numerical propor- 
tion of the former dominant caste, which was brachycephalic, 
or at least mesaticephalic ; it introduced a certain amount 
of foreign blood (Italian and other), and it favoured amal- 
gamation among the different elements of the population. 

" The racial elements imported must have been extremely 
mixed, and probably left scarcely any permanent traces, though 

* A. C. Haddon, " Studies in Irish Craniology, III. : A Neolithic Cist Burial 
at Oldbridge, County Meath," P?'oc. Roy. I^'ish Acad. (3), iv., 1S98, p. 570. 



66 THE STUDY OF MAN ' 

there may be some in a few ancient towns such as Gloucester or 
Leicester. Among relics from the Romano-British villages, our 
knowledge of which has been so much increased by General 
Pitt-Rivers, there are one or two skulls which, in the opinion of 
Dr. Garson as well as of myself [Beddoe], show Roman or Italian 
characteristics." ^ 

The Anglo-Saxon invasions were of different tribes which 
were local varieties of the Germanic type of the row graves 
or Hohberg type. This type is best represented on the Con- 
tinent by the ancient skulls of Bremen so well described by 
Gildemeister. In the earliest days of that city the Batavian 
or Frisian variety also occurred ; this variety is flatter in the 
crown and somewhat broader than the more typical form, 
and it has been recognised in Saxon England by Beddoe 
and quite recently by Myers.* 

" John Bull," says Beddoe,' "is of the Batavian type; the 
Grave-row, that of the barbarian warrior, is perhaj^s rather more 
aristocratic; but the outlines of the former may be connected, as 
Virchow thinks possible, with the obstinacy and love of freedom 
and individuality of both Frisian and Englishman. ' These 
men,' said an old chronicler of the Frisians, *^een high of body, 
stern of virtue, strong and fierce of heart: they be free, and not 
subject to lordship of any man; and they put their lives in peril 
by cause of freedom, and would liever die than embrace the yoke 
of thraldorn^' " 

The following table is adapted from one in Dr. Beddoe's 
Histoire de V Index C^pJialiqiie : 

' J. Beddoe, The Anthropological History of Europe : Being the Rhind 
Lectures for j8gi (A. Gardner, London, 1893), p. 91. 

2 Journ. Anth. Inst., xxvi., p. 113. 

3 Loc. cit., p. 91. 



VALUE OF HEAD-FORM IN ANTHROPOLOGY 



&7 









t/TW 




«5 










tx] 




u 


2 






Id '^ 


, 








H 


h 




(-.* 


(A 
U 

u 

H 

•A 


EOLITHI 
G BARRO 
-TC. (86) 


< . 

N 


2 I 


< 


c 2 
2^ 


X M 

U3 


Q « 




2 Z " 


B 


D H 


-) 


s 




2'-' 






-1 




> 











63-64 


2 












•7 


65-66 


5 


• • • • 


. • • • 


.... 


.... 


I 






67-68 


15 


.... 


I 


.... 


3 


I 




7 


69-70 


16 


I 


I 


.... 


6 


8 


I 


5 


71-72 


22 


2 


I 


.... 


18 


14 


5 


9 


73-74 


16 


II 


I 


3 


22 


33 


II 


8 


75-76 


7 


12 


2 


.... 


26 


21 


17 


6 


77-78 


3 


12 


6 


3 


16 


14 


16 


2 


79-80 


I 


19 


2 


I 


13 


6 


18 


4 


81-82 




17 


I 


.... 


4 


2 


II 


8 


83-84 




17 


I 


I 


.... 


.... 


7 


4 


85-S6 




8 


I 


I 


.... 


.... 


5 


2 


87-88 




3 


2 


.... 


.... 


.... 


I 


5 


89-90 




.... 


.... 


.... 


.... 


.... 




7 


Mean Index 


72 


80 


77.5 





75-4 


74-8 


78.5 



The most ancient race is apparently homogeneous ; it is 
extremely dolichocephalic, with a mean index of 70 or 71, 
according to the ordinary data, but Dr. Beddoe is inclined 
to make it 72. He also points out that it is by no means 
certain that only one race occupied Britain at this period. 

The second column, that of the Round Barrows, or, better, 
the Bronze Age, shows us a brachycephalic population, far 
from being homogeneous, owing probably to a greater or 
less mixture with their predecessors in the country. The 
mean index of the skull appears to be about 80, but we 
must admit that the cranial index of the pure race, or, to 
speak with more exactitude, of the people using bronze, on 
its arrival in England and before its fusion with the in- 
digenous population, would be a little over 80 or 81. There 
are indications which permit the conclusion to be drawn 



68 THE STUDY OF MAN 

that with the progress of mixture and the arrival of immi- 
grants from Belgic Gaul, the mean fell below 80. 

The Romano-British give a mean of about 75.5. Later 
came the Saxons. Before their mixture with the conquered 
British, they possessed the type of skull which is called 
" Grave-row," from the manner of sepulture of an important 
ancient Teutonic tribe ; or occasionally the Batavian type of 
skull, and their cranial index is about 75. 

Nothing positive has been determined concerning the 
skull type of the subsequent Danish or Scandinavian in- 
vaders^ 

In the Middle Ages we find mesaticephals in predomin- 
ance, and a fresh frequency of brachycephaly, the mean of 
the indices being about 78, according to Dr. Beddoe's skull 
measurements. 

The mean cephalic index of modern Englishmen appears 
to be about 78.5, which, deducting the usual two units, 
would give "j^. 5 for the cranial index. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE NOSE 

AMONG peoples in whom the more prominent types of 
nose are of usual occurrence — as among ourselves, for 
example — the snub nose is always regarded as an inferior 
type, and, although it may give a certain vivacity to a 
woman's face, it is usually regarded by her as a trial. ,Con- 
versely a long, high, narrow, Roman nose is considered an 
'* aristoc ratic " nose.^ Vi is certain that the shape of the 
nose is generally regarded not alone from an aesthetic point 
of view, but that to many minds it conveys an idea of 
weakness or strength of character, and also of social status. 
'Certain types of nose are *' better bred " than others, and, 
other things being equal, a man with a " good nose " is 
more likely to gain immediate respect than one with a 

vulgar nose." Martial, in one of those epigrams which 
used to amuse and instruct the emperors of the Flavian 
family, said: "fit is not every one to whom it has been 
given to have a noseV' Popular impressions may be illogi- 
cal, and the prejudices of the folk may be unreasoning, but 
they are all materials for anthropological and psychological 
study, and they may open up lines of thought that are sug- 
gestive and fruitful. 

{K well-formed nose is a distinctively human featured If 
you look at pictures of monkeys, from the low marmosets 
to the great tailless apes, you will at once notice how flat 

69 



70 THE STUDY OF MAN 

their nose is at the bridge. The proboscis-monkey [Nasalis 
larvatus) is the only member of the group that has a well- 
projecting nose. 

The nose is a very variable feature in mankind. We all 
recognise how a nose will make or mar a face, how it gives 
a countenance distinction or renders it insignificant. Much 
has been written on noses by physiognomists, and the ap- 
pearance of the nose is greatly relied on by those who pro- 
fess to be able to read a person's character by a scrutiny of 
the face. 

Not less is a study of the nose of interest to the anthro- 
pologist, and it is this point of view solely which concerns 
us at present. 

First of all it is necessary to distinguish between the ex- 
ternal nose as seen on the living face, and the nasal skeleton 
as it is found on the skull — and we must also fix upon a 
definite terminology. 

In the living nose we recognise the bridge^ the tip, the alee 
nasi, or wings of the nose, which arise from the cheeks in a 
rounded curve, and the nasal septum which separates the 
nostrils. 

The height of the nose is the line from the central point 
of the root to the corresponding point at the angle which 
the septum makes with the upper lip ; this spot is termed 
the sub -nasal point. 

The breadth of the nose is the greatest breadth of the 
wings. 

The depth of the living nose is the line from the sub-nasal 
point to the tip; this line is termed the base of the nose. 

The lengtJi is the line from the root to the tip. 

On examining the profile of a nose, two factors must be 
distinguished: (i) the general outline of the back or ridge 
of the nose; and (2) the inclination of the base of the nose 
with regard to the upper lip. 



THE NOSE 71 

I. The general contour of the back of the nose is expressed 
by the following five terms : Concave, straight, convex, high- 
bridged, and sinuous. These form five main classes which 
can be variously subdivided. 

1. The concave nose. The various kinds of concave or de- 
pressed nose agree in having a low bridge ; this, as we have 
already seen, is a simian or ape-like character; it is also an 
embryonic feature, and it commonly occurs among young 
children. This type of nose is very frequently met with 
among the yellow races, and is not infrequent among women 
of the higher races. 

This type may be defined in general terms as being short, 
depressed, broad, with a turned-up point. 

2. TJic straight nose. The ridge of the nose is quite 
straight in the most characteristic forms, but it is often 
slightly sinuous. The nose may be short, low, and broad ; 
but in the most developed type it is long, prominent, and 
narrow. 

3. The convex nose. The ridge or back of the nose de- 
scribes a nearly uniform convex curve from the root to the 
point. As in the last instance this type varies from short, 
low, and broad, to long, prominent, and narrow. The 
Jewish nose is the best-known variety, and the Papuan nose 
belongs to the broad variety of this group. 

4. TJie high-bridged nose. The upper portion of the bony 
part presents a strong and short convexity, below which the 
remainder of this bony part becomes nearly straight, and is 
continuous with the ridge of the gristly portion. The typi- 
cal example of this type is the Roman nose (Fig. 10). It 
may be considered as a variety of the convex nose. 

5. The sinuous nose. The upper part is convex, but the 
profile of the gristly portion, instead of continuing this curve 
as in the convex nose, or of taking a rectilinear direction as 
in the aquiline nose, is incurved. It thus results that the 



72 



THE STUDY OF MAN 











Types of Noses in Profile ; from Topinard, 

Straight, with a horizontal base; 2. convex or aquiline, with a depressed base ; 3. concave 
or retrousse, with a reflected base ; 4. high-bridged or busque ; 5. sinuous; 6. Melanesian 
type, broad, with the lower part forming a flattened and depressed hook ; 7. short, broad, 
nearly straight type of the African Negroes ; 8. straight, flat type of the Yellow Races, 



THE NOSE 



n 




direction of the line is convex above, concave below the 
bony portion, and again convex towards the tip. It is thus 
sinuous or undulating. 

The sinuous nose may be considered as a variety of the 
concave, straight, or convex nose, 
according as the totality of the 
line of the ridge presents a hol- 
low, a general rectilinear direc- 
tion, or a protruding curve. It 
is advisable that the description 
should always be so qualified. 

Without going into further de- 
tail we may now pass on to the 
second factor: 

II. The inclination of the base 
of the nose may form a right 
angle with the line of the upper 
lip or a greater or a less angle Head of Agrippa, Museo di Na- 
with it ; thus we have :— pol^ J ^'^o"^ Hovorka. 

I. A reflected base. 2. A horizontal base. 3. A de- 
pressed base. 

Any of these three conditions may occur with any variety 
of contour, but certain combinations are of more frequent 
recurrence than others. For example, the concave nose is 
usually reflected to form the snub nose, and the convex nose 
is either horizontal or depressed, the latter being the more 
typical of the Jewish nose. A concave, depressed nose is 
exceptional. A rectilinear nose with a horizontal base, and 
one in which the root is slightly marked so that the line of 
the forehead passes gently into that of the nose, constitutes 
the classical nose of Greek statues. As a matter of fact this 
feature was seized upon and exaggerated by certain Greek 
sculptors, the contours of the nose and forehead being alike 
falsified so as to give increased nobility to the expression. 



Fig. 10. 



74 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



The majesty of the brow of Zeus, the wielder of the des- 
tinies of men, was due to an overstepping of human con- 
tours, as these in their turn, in the dim ages of the past, 
had passed beyond the low outlines of the brute. 





Fig. II. 

A, Head of Zeus Otricoli ; B, the Same, with all the Hair Removed, 

and with a Corrected Profile ; from Hovorka, after Langer. 



A reflected base to a straight nose gives it a piquancy that 
was happily expressed by Tennyson when he wrote ' : 

" A damsel of high lineage, and a brow 

May-blossom, and a cheek of apple-blossom, 
Hawk eyes; and lightly was her slender nose 
Tip-tilted like the petal of a flower." 

Bertillon ^ has collected numerous statistics on the con- 
tours of noses, and he finds there is a marked transformation 

' Gareth and Lynette. 

2 A. Bertillon, " De la Morphologie du Nez," Rev. d'Anthrop. (3), ii., 1887, 
p. 158. 



THE NOSE 



75 



of the nose due to the influence of age which results in a 
kind of effacement and depression of the tip, as is seen in 
the following table, in which the numbers of subjects ex- 
amined are reduced to lOOO: 



AGE. 


BASE OF NOSE. 


Reflected. 


Horizontal. 


Depressed. 


19-25 
25-35 

35-45 


418 

254 
146 


538 
667 

713 


44 

79 
141 



It is seen that the reflected noses sink from 418 in young 
people to 146 in people in middle life, while the depressed 
noses correspondingly rise from 44 to 141. In both in- 
stances the proportion is about one to three. 

In order to obtain results which can be accurately com- 
pared with one another, measurements are made of the nose 
and an index is selected. The itasal index of the living is 
obtained by multiplying the breadth of the nose by one 
hundred and dividing the product by the height of the nose. 
The index, as is usually done in such cases, is divided into 
three classes, narrow, medium, and broad. In scientific 
terminology these are called: 

Leptorhine below 70 

Mesorhine 70 to 85 

Platyrhine above 85 

Speaking in general terms, there are, according to Topin- 

ard,' two extreme types of human nose — the low, broad, 

' P. Topinard, " Documents sur Tindice nasal du vivant," V Anthropologie, 
ii., 1891, p. 273. 



76 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



and flat, and the deep, narrow, and prominent — but between 
these every intermediate grade is found. ^As a rule, the 
more prominent a nose is the narrower it is ; the flatter it is 
the broader it becomes. The depth increases with the 
prominence and narrows and diminishes with the flattening 
and broadening. The only exceptions occur among the 
American Indians and the Eskimo. The nose among the 
former is deep and prominent, but broad; among the latter 
it is flat and broad, but at the same time deep. 

Collignon ' has proposed the following quinary classifica- 
tion of the nasal index of the living: — 



Ultra leptorhine, . 
Hyper leptorhine 

Leptorhine 



Mesorhine 

Platyrhine 

Hyper platyrhine. 
Ultra platyrhine. 



40 and und( 


40 to 44.9 


45 ' 


49.9 


50 ' 


' 54.9 


55 ' 


59-9 


60 ' 


' 64.9 


^5 ' 


69.9 


70 : 


' 74-9 


75 ' 


' 79.9 


80 ' 


' 84.9 


85 ' 


' 89.9 


90 


' 94-9 


95 ' 


' 99-9 


100 


104.9 


105 ' 


' 109.9 


no 


1 14.9 


115 ai 


id over 



The subdivisions, ranging in fives, may serve, on account 
of the great extent of each group, to express certain differ- 
ences. It is important, for example, to be able to distin- 



' R. Collignon, J^ev. d'Anthrop. (3), iii., 1887, p. 8. 



THE NOSE yj 

guish narrow, medium, or broad mesorhines; thus we may 
say the Eskimo are narrow or low ' mesorhines, and the 
Annamites are medium mesorhines; or to avoid mistakes 
one may add the figure and say the Eskimo are mesorhine 
at seventy, and the Annamites are mesorhine at seventy-six. 
We have at present an insufficient number of measure- 
ments to draw up a scheme for nasal indices which would 
have a decisive value in the classification of races. Colli- 
gnon has, however, collected the following figures, which 
must serve as a basis for future researches ^ : — 

NASAL INDEX OF THE LIVING. 

(from colli gnon^,) 

Leptorhines (~7o) 

loo French (very pure blond dolichocephalic type) 62.98 

30 French (pure Mediterranean race Pyrenees Orientales), 65.06 

1 84 Kabyles 66.5 

19 Finns. 66.5 

200 French (Aiivergne and centre) dd.dd 

168 Finns (Mordwines) 66.9 

1000 French 67.33 

100 French (Savoy and Rhone) 68.05 

Tatars of the Crimea , 68.15 

d'^ Parisians 69.4 

120 Tunisians (Berber race II.) 69.76 

Mesorhines (70-84) 

1334 Tunisians 70-23 

10 Eskimo 70.3 

5 North American Indians 70.6 

40 Tunisians (Berber race IV. of Ellez) 72.04 

50 Tunisians (brachycephalic Berber race I.) 72,5 

' The term " low " refers to the index, and not to the height-measurement of 
the nose. 

^ See also the table on p. 86. 

^ Rev. d'Anth. (3), iii., 18S7, p. 16. 



78 THE STUD Y OF MAN 

8 Fuegians 74.8 

26 Kalmuks 74.82 

40 Kara-Kirghis of Semiret-chensk 74.9 

6 Tziganes (" Gypsies ") 75.4 

9 Red-skins 75.6 

7 Sinhalese 75.7 

113 Tunisians (Berber race III. of Djerid) 76.62 

52 Annamites 76.8 

5 Chinese 77 

4 Araucans 80.6 

3 Northern Mongols 81. i 

5 South Americans 81.4 

FlatyrJmies {85 +) 

7 Senegal Negroes 87.9 

4 Solomon Islanders 89.1 

13 Polynesians 89.8 

24 African Negroes (casts) 92.2 

II New Caledonians and New Hebrideans 93.8 

44 Tunisian Negroes 96.28 

5 Hottentots and Bushmen 97.2 

4 Fijians 97.7 

4 Bushmen 101.7 

52 Zambesi Negroes 10 1.5 

4 Australians 101.7 

1 1 Australians 107.6 

7 Tasmanians 108.9 

A consideration of this table shows that as a whole the 
means of the white races range from 62 to j6, the yellow 
races (including the American races) from 69 to 81, the Afri- 
can Negroes from 87 to loi, and the Melanesians (or Oceanic 
Negroes) from 93 to 109. In other words the white races 
are mainly leptorhine, the yellow races mainly and Ameri- 
can races entirely mesorhine, and the black races of Africa, 
the Western Pacific, and of Australasia solely platyrhine. 

In a previous chapter I have already drawn attention to 



THE NOSE 79 

the fact that among certain peoples one can distinguish what 
may be termed algoarse'type and a^fine type. 

Maspero, in his interesting Dawn of Civilisation^^ thus 
graphically describes these two types among the ancient 
Egyptians: 

"IXhe highest type of Egyptian was tall and slender, with 
something that was proud and imperious in the carriage of his 
head and in his whole bearing. He had wide and full shoulders, 
muscular arms, a long, fine hand, slightly developed hips, and 
sinewy legs. The head is rather short, the face oval, the fore- 
head somewhat retreating. The eyes are wide and fully opened, 
the cheek-bones not too marked, the nose fairly prominent, and 
either straight or aquiline. The mouth is long and the lips full. 
The hair was inclined to be wavy. 

" The common type was squat, dumpy, and heavy. The chest 
and shoulders seem to be enlarged at the expense of the pelvis and 
hips, to such an extent as to make the want of proportion between 
the upper and lower parts of the body startling and ungraceful. 
The skull is long, somewhat retreating, and slightly flattened on 
the top ; the features are coarse, and as though carved in flesh by 
great strokes of the roughing-out chisel. Small frsenated eyes, a 
short nose, flanked by widely distended nostrils, round cheeks, a 
square chin, thick, but not curling lips — this unattractive and 
ludicrous physiognomy, sometimes animated by an expression of 
cunning which recalls the shrewd face of an old French peasant, 
is often lighted up by gleams of gentleness and of melancholy 
good nature. 

" The external characteristics of these two principal types, 
whose endless modifications are to be found on the ancient monu- 
ments, may still be seen among the living." 

An analogous difference may be noticed among the Jap- 
anese. Not only has this appealed to the scientific mind of 

' G. Maspero, The Dawn of Civilisation : Egypt and ChalJcea, Eng. trans., 
1894, p. 47. 



80 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Dr. Balz, but it has attracted the attention of native artists; 
and one may see, as in a picture by Torii Kiyonaga, a 
mother of the fine type, watching a coarse-featured servant 




Fig. 12. 

Heads of Japanese Men of the Fine and Coarse Type ; from 
Hovorka, after Balz. 

feeding the baby, who is also depicted with a nose of the 
typ^ of its mother's. The celebrated school of the Torii, 
who flourished in the eighteenth century, invented colour- 
printing. In a picture by Outmaro, a Japanese nobleman is 
paying a ceremonial visit, and on the verandah is seen his 
low-visaged bearer, whose degraded countenance and squat 
nose with its broad nostril offer a marked contrast to the 
oval face and delicate nose of his master. Peeping from 
behind a screen are the faces of three girls; two of the fine 
type belong to daughters of the house, and between them is 
their rounder-faced maid. 

i^owhere has the distinction between the fine and coarse 
type of nose been more fully studied than in India, and the 
results of these investigations are so interesting and import- 
ant that I shall deal with them in considerable detail. 

In 1891 and 1892, Mr. H. H. Risley published four 
volumes on TJic Ti'ibcs and Castes of Bengal, which embodied 
an immense mass of anthropometric data and ethnographic 



Plate II. 




Fig. I, Photograph of a Tamil Pariah ; after Thurston, 




Fig. 2. Japanese Women of the Fine and Coarse Type 
after a picture by Torii Kiyonaga. 



THE NOSE 8 1 

researches. Mr. Risley finds that in India the nasal index 
ranks higher as a distinctive character than the stature or 
even than the cephaHc index itself." 

'^If we take a series of castes," writes Mr. Risley, " in Bengal, 
Behar, or the North-Western Provinces, and arrange them in the 
order of the average nasal index, so that the caste with the finest 
nose shall be at the top, and that with the coarsest at the bottom 
of the list, it will be found that this order substantially corre- 
sponds with the accepted order of social precedence. The caste- 
less tribes — Kols, Korwas, Mundas, and the like — who have not 
yet entered the Brahmanical system, occupy the lowest place. 
Then come the vermin-eating Musahars and the leather-dressing 
Chamars. The fisher castes of Bauri, Bind, and Kevvat are a trifle 
higher in the scale ; the pastoral Goala, the cultivating Kurmi, 
and a group of cognate castes from whose hands a Brahman may 
take water, follow in due order, and from them we pass to the 
trading Khatris, the land-holding Babhans, and the upper crust of 
Hindu society. Thus, it is scarcely a paradox to lay down as a 
law for the caste organisation in Eastern India, that a man's social 
status varies in inverse ratio to the width of his nose. 

" Nor is this the only point in which the two sets of observa- 
tions — the social and the physical — bear out and illustrate each 
other. The character of the curious matrimonial groupings for 
which the late Mr. J. F. McLennan devised the happy term ex- 
ogafnous^ also varies in a definite relation to the gradations of 
physical type. Within a certain range of nasal proportions, these 
subdivisions are based almost exclusively on the totem. Along 
with a somewhat finer form of nose, groups called after villages 
and larger territorial areas, or bearing the name of certain tribal 
or communal officials, begin to appear, and above these again we 
reach the eponymous saints and heroes, who in India, as in Greece 
and Rome, are associated with a certain stage of Aryan progress." ^ 

' H. H. Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal : Ethnographic Glossary, 
i. , 1892, p. xxxiii. 



82 THE STUDY OF MAN 

It is now generally admitted that some four thousand 
years ago the valley of the Indus was invaded via Kabul 
and Kashmir by a fair Aryan race that had already wandered 
afar, and which now came in contact with an aboriginal 
black race. 

*^ The sense of differences of colour, which, for all our talk of 
common humanity, still plays a great, and, politically, often an 
inconvenient part in the history of the world, finds forcible ex- 
pression in the Vedic descriptions of the people whom the Aryans 
found in possession of the plains of India. In a well-known pas- 
sage the god Indra is praised for having protected the Aryan 
colour, and the word meaning colour (varnd) is used down to the 
present day as the equivalent of caste, more especially with refer- 
ence to the castes believed to be of Aryan descent." ^ 

The word caste is of Portuguese origin. In the 179th 
hymn of the first Mandala of the Rig- Veda, as Dr. Gerson 
da Cunha points out,^ the word varna is used in the dual 
number, ubhaii varnaUy " two colours," white of the Aryans, 
and black of the Dasyus, that is, of the Dravidian aborigines, 
who are elsewhere called " black-skinned," " unholy," 
" excommunicated " ; other texts dwell on their low stature, 
coarse features, and their voracious appetite; but what is of 
more immediate interest, the Rig- Veda applies the word 
andsa, " noseless," to the Dasyus and Daityas, which de- 
signations mean *' thieves " or " demons." It is hardly an 
exaggeration to say that from these sources there might be 
compiled a fairly accurate anthropological definition of the 
Dravidian tribes of to-day. 

The Aryan type, as we find it in India at the present day, 
is marked by a relatively long (dolichocephalic) head ; a 

^ Loc. cit., p. xxxviii. 

^"Presidential Address: The Nasal Index in Biological Anthropology," 
Journ. Anth. Soc. Bombay, 1892, p. 542. 



THE NOSE 83 

straight, finely-cut (leptorhine) nose ; a long, symmetrically 
narrow face; a well-developed forehead, regular features, 
and a high facial angle. The stature is fairly high, ranging 
from 1716 mm. (5 ft. 7J in.) in the Sikhs of the Panjab, to 
1656 mm. (5 ft. 5;^ in.) in the Brahmans of Bengal; and the 
general build of the figure is well proportioned and slender 
rather than massive. In the castes which exhibit these 
characteristics the complexion is a very light transparent 
brown — " wheat-coloured " is the common vernacular de- 
scription — noticeably fairer than that of the mass of the 
population. Colour, however, is a character which eludes 
all attempts to record or define its gradations, and even the 
extreme varieties can only be described in very general 
terms. 

Their exogamous groups are eponymous, bearing the 
names of their Vedic rishis, saints or heroes. 

In the Dravidian type the form of the head usually in- 
clines to be dolichocephalic, but all other characters present 
a marked contrast to the Aryan. The nose is thick and 
broad, and the formula expressing its proportionate dimen- 
sions is higher than in any known race, except the Negro. 
The facial angle is comparatively low; the lips are thick; 
the face wide and fleshy ; the features coarse and irregular. 
The average stature ranges in a long series of tribes from 
1562 mm. (5 ft. i| in.) to 162 1 (5 ft. 3} in.); the figure is 
squat and the limbs sturdy. The colour of the skin varies 
from very dark brown to a shade closely approaching black. 

Their totemistic groups bear the names of animals, plants, 
and artificial objects, to all of which diverse forms of taboo 
are applied. 

Notwithstanding the repugnance of the noble Aryan to 
mix with the savage Dasyu, as is evidenced by the poetical 
legends of the contests between the gods of the Hindu 
mythology with the demons, or spirits of mountain and 



84 THE STUDY OF MAN 

forest, the indigenous elements by their numerical superior- 
ity preponderated over the foreign ones. 

To avert this menaced absorption, and to sustain the 
ethnic necessity of the caste system, a religious communion 
was introduced, to which there was less antipathy. Sir A. 
Lyall has proved that the primitive jungle tribe moved im- 
perceptibly into the Hindu system by the gradual blending 
of the old with the new faith, which preceded their admis- 
sion into the castal hierarchy and the breaking up of their 
tribal organisation. " They pass," he says, " into Brah- 
manists by a natural upward transition, which leads them to 
adopt the religion of the castes immediately above them in 
the social scale of the composite population among which 
they settle down ; and we may reasonably guess that this 
process has been working for centuries." This religious 
sanction is expounded in Manu's code, which, although 
said to have been written as late as 500 A.D., relates to 
changes effected as early as 1200 B.C. 

Although absolutely hostile to the strain of aboriginal 
blood, the code divided and subdivided the people, leaving 
out of the system the pariah, which originally simply meant 
a " mountaineer." These pariahs are, probably, the de- 
scendants of the "(monkey" tribes of Ravana, who crossed 
from India into Ceylon across Adam's Bridge, as narrated 
in the great Indian epic, the Rdmdyana, in which the events 
of invasion, war, and migration can be dimly discerned 
through the mass of tradition and legendary lore with which 
they are overlaid. 

In the Madras Census Report of 1891, the Census Com- 
missioner, Mr. H. A. Stuart, states that 

" it has often been asserted, and is now the general belief, that 
the Brahmans of the south are not pure Aryans, but are a mixed 
Aryan and Dravidian race. In the earliest times the caste divi- 



THE NOSE 85 

sion was much less rigid than now, and a person of another caste 
could become a Brahman by attaining the Brahmanical standard 
of knowledge, and assuming the Brahmanical functions. And 
when we see the Nambudiri Brahmans, even at the present day, 
contracting alliances, informal though they be, with the women 
of the country, it is not difficult to believe that, on their first 
arrival, such unions were even more common, and that the 
children born of them would be recognised as Brahmans, though, 
perhaps, regarded as an inferior caste. (However, these Brah- 
mans, in whose veins mixed blood is supposed to run, are even 
to this day regarded as lower in the social scale, and are not al- 
lowed to mix freely with the pure Brahman community." 

According to Mr. Risley ' : — 

"(The remarkable correspondence between the gradations of 
type as brought out by certain indices, and the gradations of 
social precedence, enables us to conclude that commu7iity of race^ 
and not, as has frequently been argued, community of fuiiction^ is 
the real determining principle of the caste system. (Everywhere 
we find high social position associated with a certain physical 
type, and conversely low social position with a markedly different 
type." 

The latest investigations in Indian anthropology are those 
of Mr. Edgar Thurston, the energetic Superintendent of 
the Madras Government Museum.^ Mr. Thurston has 
studied the natives of Southern India, more especially the 
tribes of the Nilgiri Hills. The accompanying table is an 
abridgment of his Table xi., vol. ii., p. 63. 

^Journ. Anih. Inst., xx., i8qi, p. 259. 

"^ " Anthropology of the Todas and Kotahs of the Nilgiri Hills ; and of the 
Brahmans, Pallis, Kammalans, and Pariahs of Madras City," Madras Govern- 
ment Museum Bulletijt, vol. i., No. 4, i8g6 ; " Anthropology of the Badagas 
and Irulas of the Nilgiris ; Paniyans of Malabar ; Chinese-Tamil Cross ; a 
Cheruman Skull ; Kuiiiba or Kurumba ; Summary of Results" (/. c, vol. ii.. 
No. I, 1897). 



86 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



TABLE OF NASAL INDICES OF CASTES AND TRIBES OF 
SOUTHERN INDIA 

(AFTER THURSTON.) 

Average. Minimum. Maximum. Range. 

Leptorhine = 70. 

Lambadis 69.1 59.2 83.7 24.5 

Sheik Muhammadans 70 60 85.1 25.1 

Mesorhine 70 = 85. 

Kurubas 73.2 62.3 85.9 23.6 

Todas 74.9 61.2 89.1 17.9 

Kotas 75.5 64 92.9 18.9 

Badagas 75.6 62.7 88.4 15.7 

Kanarese Pariahs 75.9 61.5 88.1 26.6 

Pattar Brahmans 76.5 64.7 95.3 30,1 

Brahmans (Madras City) .... 76.7 60 95.1 35.1 

Cherumans 78.1 69.6 88.9 29.3 

Tamil Pariahs 80 66 105 39 

Muppas 81.5 70.5 92.3 21.8 

Irulas 84.9 72.3 100 27.7 

Platyrhine 85 -f 

Pal Kurumbas 87 .... .... .... 

Urali Kurumbas 93.4 .... .... .... 

Sholigas 94.4 .... .... .... 

Paniyans 95. i 83.7 108.6 24.9 

Of the twenty-four cases in the original table only two are 
leptorhine and four are platyrhine, the great majority being 
mesorhine. 

In the next table we have a comparison of nasal indices 
of 20-25 members of various classes, arranged in groups of 
ten units. This very clearly brings out the value of the 
nasal index in the discrimination of races. 



50-60 60-70 

Lambadis 2 13 

Sheik Muhammadans 13 

Kurubas 8 

Kanarese Pariahs 6 

Todas 4 



70-80 


80-gO QO-ICO lOO-I 


6 


4 


II 


I 


14 


3 


10 


9 


13 


8 



THE NOSE 87 

50-60 60-70 70-80 80-90 90-100 lOO-IIO 



Kotas 4 II 8 I 

Brahmans (Madras City) 

Pattar Brahmans 

Badagas 

Tamil Pariahs 

Cherumans 

Muppas 

Irulas 

Paniyans 



4 12 8 I 

4 15 4 2 

3 14 8 .. 

I 9 14 I 

I 16 8 .. 

II II 2 

7 II 6 I 

5 9 10 



It will be seen that the average nasal index of the people 
investigated ranges from 69. i in the tall, light-skinned, and 
long, narrow-nosed Lambadis, who speak an Aryan lan- 
guage, to 95.1 in the short, dark-skinned, and short, broad- 
nosed Paniyans ; and that the indices recorded range between 
a minimum of 59.2 in a Lambadi and a maximum of 108.6 
in a Paniyan. Mr Thurston has, however, measured a 
Paniyan woman who possessed a nose 31 mm. in height and 
37 mm. in breadth, the nasal index being 1 19.4. The Sheik 
Muhammadans of Madras claim to be descendants of emi- 
grants from the north, and to be distinct from the converted 
Dravidians. Their claim is no doubt justified; but well- 
marked signs of admixture of Dravidian blood are conspicu- 
ous in some members of their communities, whose dark skin 
and high nasal index betray their non-Aryan descent. This 
miscegenation is clearly brought out by Thurston in the 
figure given on page 89, in which we have a series of triangles 
representing in two-thirds natural size the minima, average, 
and maxima nasal indices of individuals belonging to the 
poorer classes of Brahmans of Madras City, of Tamil Pariahs, 
and of Paniyans. There is obviously far less connection be- 
tween the Brahman minimum and the Paniyan maximum 
than between the Brahman and Pariah maxima and the 
Paniyan average. The frequent occurrence of high nasal 
indices, resulting from short, broad noses, in Brahmans has 



88 THE STUDY OF MAN 

already been accounted for in the quotations I have made 
from Sir A. Lyall and Mr. H. A. Stuart. 

One is accustomed to regard the problem of Indian eth- 
nography as of only moderate complexity, as is seen in the 
following abstract of a paper by Mr. Risley.* 

There are three main types in the population of India at 
the present day : — 

1. A leptorhine, pro-opic/ dolichocephalic type, of tall 
stature, light build, long and narrow face, comparatively fair 
complexion, and high facial angle. 

This type is most marked in the Panjab. 
Their exogamous groups are eponymous, names of Vedic 
saints or heroes. 

2. A platyrhine, mesopic,^ or nearly platyopic, dolichoce- 
phalic type, of low stature, thickset, very dark complexion, 
relatively broad face, usually low facial angle. This type is 
most distinct in Chota Nagpore and the Central Provinces. 

Its sections are totemistic, like those of North American 
Indians ; that is, they are names of animals, plants, or artifi- 
cial objects, to all of which some form of taboo applies. 

3. A mesorhine, platyopic,^ brachycephalic type of a low 
or medium stature, sturdy build, yellowish complexion, 
broad face, and low facial angle. 

This type is found along the northern and eastern frontiers 
of Bengal. 

Their exogamous groups are very curious, being mostly 
nicknames of the supposed founder of the sept, such as 

the fat man who broke the stool," and others less fit for 
publication. 

1 H. H. Risley, "The Study of Ethnology in India," y^«r«. Anth. Inst., 
XX., 1891, p. 235. 

^ The terms pro-opic, mesopic, and platyopic have reference to the height or 
prominence of the bridge of the nose ; for further details see the chapter on 
measurements. 



THE NOSE 



89 




Brahman 




Pariah 




Mini 



mum 



Paniyan 
Average 



Maximum 



Fig. 13. 
Diagrams of the Variations in the Height and Breadth of the Noses of 
the Poorer Classes of Brahmans of Madras City, of Tamil Pariahs, 
and of Paniyans, two-thirds Natural Size ; after Thurston. 



90 THE STUDY OF MAN 

1. LeptorJiine, Pro-opic Dolichoccphals. 

If it be accepted that Karl Penka has proved the typical 
Aryan to be dolichocephalic, there would seem to be some 
grounds for believing that in the dolichocephalic leptorhine 
type of the Panjab and north-western frontier at the present 
day, we may recognise the descendants of the invading 
Aryans of three thousand years ago, changed, no doubt, in 
hair, eyes, and complexion, but retaining the more enduring 
characteristics of their race in the shape of their head, their 
stature, and the finely-cut proportions of their nose. Sur- 
vivals of fair, or rather reddish hair, grey eyes, and reddish- 
blond complexion are, moreover, still to be found, as Penka 
has pointed out, and as Risley himself has seen, among the 
Kaffirs from beyond the Panjab frontier. 

Anyway, the striking preponderance of dolichocephaly in 
the Panjab and the North-Western Provinces, and its 
gradual increase as we travel up the Ganges Valley towards 
the traditional Aryan tract, tend both to strengthen Penka's 
hypothesis and to enhance the credibility of early Indian 
legends. These facts go also to show that Penka is mis- 
taken in supposing that the Indian branch of the Aryans 
became brachycephalic on their way to India. Had this 
been so, the dolichocephaly which now distinguishes them 
could only have been derived from crosses with the black 
race, and the Aryans could hardly have become dolichoce- 
phalic in this way without also becoming platyrhine. 

2. Platyrhine, Mesopic DolicJiocephals. 

The measurements show the current distinction between 
the Dravidians and Kolarians, on which stress has been laid 
by Dalton and others, to be a purely linguistic character, 
not corresponding to any appreciable difference of physical 
type. 



THE NOSE 91 

The hypothesis of the north-eastern origin of the so-called 
Kolarians urged by Colonel Dalton, and recently advanced 
by Mr. J. F. Hewitt, must also be abandoned as inconsistent 
with the dolichocephalic skull of the typical representatives 
of the group. 

Whatever the Kolhs may be, they certainly are not a 
Mongoloid race. 

3. Mesorhine, Platyopic Brachycephals. 

All of the groups which come within this category are 
demonstrably of more or less pronounced Mongolian de- 
scent ; and we may conveniently call them Mongoloid. 

The type is essentially a frontier type, and its influence 
can in no case be traced far into the interior of India. 

The Kochh or Rajbansi, a large tribe of Bengal, who now 
pose as an outlying branch of the Rajputs, are, indeed, 
commonly supposed to have some strain of Mongolian blood 
among them, but Risley doubts if this opinion is well 
founded. A slight degree of platyopy is, it is true, met with 
among them, but this may equally well be accounted for on 
the supposition of their affinity to the platyrhine type. 

The nasal index of the dolichocephalic tribes that are of 
non-Aryan descent requires a further analysis, and it appears 
to me that Mr. Thurston's researches suggest that the prob- 
lem is more complex than is generally admitted. 

On looking at the table on page 86, we are struck with 
the fact that three tribes, the Badagas, Todas, and Kotas, 
have the least variation of any in the range of their nasal 
indices. They have lived an isolated existence on the 
plateau of the Nilgiri Hills until the settlement of the Eng- 
lish in recent times, and we may with safety regard them as 
a fairly primitive non-Aryan people. The owners of the 
greatest variation (exceeding a range of 30 units) constitute 
a group of Tamil classes made up of Brahmans, Pattar 



92 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Brahmans descended from east-coast Tamil Brahmans, and 
other classes that I have not copied out ; the greatest range 
is found among the Pariahs of Madras City. Mr. Thurston 
measured one very dark-skinned Tamil Pariah cooly, who 
was 5 ft. 3^ in. (i6o8 mm.) in height, and whose nose was 
40 mm. in height, 42 mm. in breadth, with an index of 105 
(Plate II., Fig. i). 

The least variable, that is, the least mixed, of these groups, 
have low mesorhine indices (average 75.5); the most variable 
have higher indices. The Paniyans, with the highest indices 
of all, have a moderate amount of range. 

In order to compare among themselves the Badagas, 
Todas, Kotas, and Paniyans, it will be necessary to take 
other data into consideration, so I have selected a few from 
Mr. Thurston's tables. 

No. of Av. Length Av. Facial Ratio of 

Men Ceph. of Nasal An 1 Stature. Span. Span to 

Measured. Index. Head. Index. ^ ^' Stat.= loo 

Badagas... 40 71.7 189 75.6 71° \\^^^ ^717 104.6 



i 1696 
Kotas 25 74.1 192 75.5 70° ] J ^i 1683 



Todas 25 73.3 194 74.9 68" jg.es ^750 103.2 



5-4 



103.3 
105 



Paniyans.. 25 74 184 95.1 67° ] 5^2"^ ^652 

The Todas possess exactly the same average stature as the 
89,000 Germans, whose measurements are given by Gould, 
and just miss being included with the English among the very 
tall races of the world. Between the Todas and the next 
tallest class measured by Thurston, the Sheik Muhammadans 
(1645 mm.), there is a well-defined gap of 51 mm. (2 inches). 
The tallest men he came across were a Toda (1850 mm. = 
6 ft. f in.) and a Badaga (1832 mm. =: 6 ft. ^ in.). The 
Paniyans have the shortest average, and also have the rela- 
tively longest arms. 

Measurements which are useful in some other places have 
no diagnostic value in Southern India, such, for example, as 



THE NOSE 93 

the cephalic index and the facial angle. It is, however, 
worthy of note that the Todas, Kotas, and Badagas have 
the longest heads recorded by Thurston, and are in this 
respect separated from the Paniyans. The facial angle, 
though of great importance in separating prognathous from 
orthognathous races, is of little use as an aid to comparison 
and classification of the different communities of Southern 
India, in whom the average of the angle of Cuvier (with its 
vertex at the edge of the incisor teeth) ranges in the people 
examined by Thurston between 6^"^ and 71°. Here, again, 
only the Badagas reach 71°, only one other group besides 
the Kotas reach 70°, and only the Sheik Muhammadans and 
the Paniyans fall as low as 6']'^ . 

Existing materials do not enable us to prosecute the 
analysis much further, but among the non-Aryan tribes of 
Southern India it appears as if we could trace two groups: 
(i) a taller, with moderately long arms, with long heads, and 
distinctly dolichocephalic, a moderate facial angle, and a 
mesorhine nose; (2) a very short, long-armed group, dolicho- 
cephalic, more prognathous, and with a very platyrhine nose. 
The Nilgiri Hill tribes are typical examples of the former 
group, and the dark-skinned, curly-haired Paniyans of the 
latter group. 

It is a common belief among the European planting com- 
munity that the Paniyans are of African origin, and de- 
scended from ancestors who were wrecked on the Malabar 
coast. This theory, which is based solely on their general 
appearance, breaks down on investigation. Of their origin 
nothing definite is known. An interesting account of these 
people is given by Thurston, and it is evident that we are 
dealing with a very primitive group of mankind, who have 
left traces of their former greater extension in the broad 
noses which occur among the lower Hindu castes. 

In his earlier work Dr. CoUignon, like other French an- 



94 THE STUDY OF MAN 

thropologists, was inclined to place great value on the nasal 
index of the living as a distinguishing character of the races 
of Western Europe. Taking the three main constituents of 
the French nation, he found * the nasal indices came out in 
the following order: 

Kymri 63.39 

Mediterraneans 65.48 

Celts* 67.20 

And he naturally thought this was an excellent means of 
further distinguishing between the tall, dolichocephalic, fair 
race that came from the north, the fairly short, dolicho- 
cephalic, dark race of the south, and the short, brachy- 
cephalic, dark race of the centre. 

In the same paper (p. 508) Collignon formulates the law 
that " in a given race leptorhiny is in direct relation to 
stature ; the more it is raised, the longer the nose, the lower 
it is, the more the nose tends to mesorhiny. " 

As a result of his later researches Collignon finds that the 
nasal index in the living is of little practical value in French 
anthropology. He says ^ : — 

" Like the stature, the nasal index has received a serious blow 
(from being' in the front rank for the classification of European 
races). It is true that this character maintains its incomparable 
value for the separation of the main trunks of mankind, but, so 
far as concerns the European races, properly so-called, it is in- 
contestable that its value is diminished. The ethnic scale, which 
is naturally of a narrow range between races so allied to one an- 
other, may be neutralised by local variations in height. It thus 

' R. Collignon, " Etude anthropometrique elementaire des principales Races 
de France," Bull. Soc. d' Anthrop. de Paris, 1883, p. 502. 

^ This term is used in Broca's sense. See p. 121. 

^R. Collignon, "Anthropologic de la France; Dordogne," etc., Mem. Soc. 
d'AntJi. de Paris (3), i., 1894, p. 43. 



THE NOSE 95 

happens that the importance of the index is only relative, and 
that it loses the character of precision which we formerly credited 
it with." 

We must now pass to a consideration of the nose from 
a craniological point of view. In the skull we find that 
the prominent part of the nose is formed of two elements, 
the nasal bones, and the upper jaw or maxillary bones ; the 
former constitute the bridge of the nose, the latter bound 
the lateral and inferior margin of the nasal aperture, and 
they also flank the nasal bones so as to separate them from 
the orbits. The nasal bones are bounded above by the 
frontal or bone of the forehead. The mid-point of the 
fronto-nasal suture is termed by anthropologists the nasion; 
the corresponding spot in the living nose is the root. The 
nasal aperture is technically called the apertura pyriformis, 
the lower border of which has certain characteristics to 
which reference will be made. In the middle line of this 
lower border there is usually a bony projection, the nasal 
spine, which is continuous with the gristly and partly ossified 
nasal septum. There is no need to refer to the gristly por- 
tions of the external nose, as these are macerated away in 
dried skulls, and, though a description of them is here 
omitted, it must be remembered that they support and give 
the form to the nose as seen in the living subject. 

The height of the nose is the line joining the nasion to the 
corresponding point at the base of the nasal spine. 

The breadth is the greatest diameter of the nasal aper- 
ture. 

The cranial nasal index is the ratio of the nasal breadth 
to its height; this is obtained by multiplying the former by 
one hundred and dividing the product by the latter. The 
indices are grouped by Broca in a threefold classification 
into broad, medium, and narrow noses, the figures being: 



96 THE STUDY OF MAN 

FRENCH AND " FRANKFURT 

ENGLISH. AGREEMENT." 

- 48 Leptorhine - 47 

48-53 Mesorhine 47-51 

53-|- Platyrhine 51 + 

The nasal indices to the left are those that were first sug- 
gested by Broca, and which have been subsequently adopted 
by French and English anthropologists; to the right are 
those in general use in Germany, as accepted at the 

Frankfurter Verstandigung. " 

In the following table I have collected from Broca, Top- 
inard, Flower, and other sources, a selection of nasal indices. 
It is evident that we have here the same story that is told 
by the nasal index of the living. The black races are platy- 
rhine, whether they come from Africa or Oceania. The 
yellow races, including the Indo-Polynesians and Americans, 
are mesorhine, and the European races are leptorhine. 

TABLE OF CRANIAL NASAL INDICES, 

PLATYRHINE RACES. 

African. 

Bushmen 60.2 Kordofan 55.4 

Lower Guinea 58.8 Upper Guinea 55.2 

Kaffirs 57.8 Senegal 55.1 

Hottentots 57.3 Nubians 55.1 

Oceanic. 

Tasraanians 57.4 New Caledonians 52.9 

Fijians 57.1 Papuans, S.E 52 

Australians 56.9 

MESORHINE RACES. 

Javanese 5 1.4 Chinese 49 

Malays (various) 50.3 Polynesians 48 

Lapps 50.2 Japanese 48 

Annamites 50.1 Americans 47.2 



THE NOSE 97 

LEPTORHINE RACES. 

Berbers of Biskra 48.9 English 46 

Italians of Lombardy .... 48.3 Syrians 45.8 

Egyptians 47. i Arabs 45.5 

Russians 46.8 Berbers (Kabyles) 44.2 

Parisians 46.7 Eskimo 43 

Auvergnats 46.2 

One or two points call for comment. It will be seen that 
at the limits of each group there are indices which should 
numerically be placed in the next group. For example, the 
New Caledonians and the Papuans of the archipelago at the 
extreme south-east of British New Guinea have mesorhine 
instead of platyrhine indices; this is due directly or in- 
directly to a crossing with Polynesians. Of this we have 
direct evidence for the New Caledonians, and I have adduced 
evidence ^ for a migration from the Melanesian Archipelago 
into the south-east of New Guinea; but these Melanesians 
had already been subjected to Polynesian influence. The 
nasal index of the Polynesians is at the extreme lower end 
of mesorhiny. The Berbers of Biskra have doubtless had 
their nose broadened by Nigritic mixture, for the pure Ber- 
bers are among the most leptorhine of men. The Lombard- 
ians have an exceptionally high index for Europeans. By 
their exceptionally low index the Eskimo are sharply sepa- 
rated from the Mongolic and American races ; this fact is in 
harmony with their very dolichocephalic cranium (index 
about 72) and long face. The exact relationship of these 
interesting people is not yet definitely established. 

The nasal index of the primitive Andaman Islanders 
(50.9) and that of the nearly equally primitive Veddahs 
(52.5) are smaller than one might expect, as these races are 
very unspecialised groups of mankind. The new-born 

' A. C. Haddon, "The Decorative Art of British New Guinea," Ciinnmg- 
hani Memoir X., Roy. h-ish Acad., 1894. 



98 THE STUDY OF MAN 

French infant, according to Broca, has an index of 59.2, 
and is, consequently, about as platyrhine as the Bushmen 
of South Africa. 

One word of warning is necessary : although the nasal in- 
dices in the living and in the skull agree very well as a 
whole, it must be distinctly understood that there is no 
necessary relation between them. It is impossible even to 
approximately calculate the one index from the other. 

The learned Broca ' has made a comparative study of the 
nasal index in the skulls of Egypt and France, and in both 
cases he has proved that the nasal index, despite numerous 
crossings, was perpetuated for centuries without important 
changes. 

We need not enter into a discussion concerning the ethnical 
relationships of the earliest population of Egypt ; it is gen- 
erally admitted that they were fundamentally a branch of 
the great Mediterranean race, but there is no doubt that 
several ethnic elements entered into their composition. The 
two types to which I have already referred, and which 
Pruner-Bey "^ first described as the fine and coarse types, are 
found in the subterranean galleries of Sakkara, which belong 
to the IVth Dynasty (about 4000 B.C.), and equally occur in 
the collections of skulls of the ancient Empire. Whatever 
may be the origin of the fine type, it is only the coarse type 
that participates in the characters of the Nigritic peoples of 
Nubia. This prehistoric mixture must have been already 
ancient at the beginning of the Pharaonic period, for the 
characters of the Egyptian race have since been maintained 
with a remarkable stability ; whence we may conclude that 
the effects of this crossing had at that early period already 

' P. Broca, " Recherches sur I'indice nasal," Rev. d' Anthropologic, i., 1872, 

P- I- ^ . ' . „ 

■^Pruner-Bey, "Recherches sur I'origine de I'ancienne race Egyptienne," 

Mevi. Soc. d'Anth, i., 1861. 



THE NOSE 99 

arrived at this condition of stability, and this could only be 
realised at the end of a great number of generations. 

The nasal index of the skulls of the IVth Dynasty had a 
mean of 47.93, and in this figure one may recognise the in- 
fluence of the platyrhine races of Nubia. Let us now see 
what happened to the nasal index in later times. 

It is known that in the Pharaonic times the valley of the 
Nile was invaded in turn from the south, the east, and the 
west, and thus received influences from the Nubian or 
Ethiopian race, from the Syro-Arab or Semitic race, and 
from the Lybian or Berber race. 

The Persian, Macedonian, and Roman conquests further 
introduced new Asiatic or European elements, and the 
Semitic element was restored more fully and persistently by 
the Arab conquest. In spite of all these mixtures, the nasal 
index of the existing Kopts does not differ perceptibly from 
that of the ancient Graves. 

About the IVth Dynasty' (3998-3721 B.C.), before all 
these invasions, the mean nasal index was, as we have seen, 
47.93 ; among the Kopts of the nineteenth century it is 
47. 15. Is this because all the people who were successively 
established in Egypt had the same nasal index ? By no 
means ; for the index of the victorious Ethiopians was 
greater, whilst that of the Syro-Arab peoples and of the 
Berber tribes was, on the contrary, very small. MM. Hamy 
and Broca obtained twenty-two skulls from an ancient inter- 
ment in the Island of Elephantine, opposite to Assouan, at 
the foot of the First Cataract, near the border of Upper 
Egypt and Nubia; the nasal index was 5S-I7- 

It is known that the Vlth ' Dynasty (3503-3322 B.C.) had 

' The dates of the dynasties are those given by Flinders Petrie in his History 
of ^gypty 2d ed., i., 1895, p. 252. 

' Broca says "Vlth Dynasty," but according to Flinders Petrie {History of 
Egypt, i., p. 69), the Vth Dynasty (3721-3503 B.C.) was of Elephantine origin. 



100 THE STUDY OF MAN 

its origin in Elephantine. So much for the Ethiopians. 
As to the Syro-Arabs, there is no doubt they had a very 
small nasal index, since that of recent Arabs is only 45.57, 
and that of Syrians 45.87. There remain the Lybian and 
Berber peoples, who established themselves in the Delta 
during the XlXth Dynasty, and who later, under Psammet- 
ik, gave a dynasty to Egypt. It is admitted that these 
peoples have a remarkably low nasal index. Broca measured 
ten Kabyle (Berber) skulls that had an index of 44.28, and 
some Guanches, who belonged to the same race, had an 
index of 44.25. 

At the Xlth Dynasty (2821-2778 B.C.), after the Dynasty 
of Elephantine, which was the Vlth, and which lasted for 
over two hundred years, the index rose to 48.43. Under 
the XVIIIth Dynasty (i 587-1327 B.C.), which followed close 
the long domination of Syro-Arab pastoral kings, it was 
maintained at 48.77; under the dynasties that followed, 
until the Macedonian period, it descended to 47.28. These 
are insignificant oscillations, and quite as insignificant is the 
change which has followed the Arab conquest of the seventh 
century, as the existing Kopts have an index of 47. 15. One 
sees then, that if the mixtures of races have been able to ex- 
ercise a slight influence on the nasal index of the Egyptians, 
this influence has only been temporary. 

MEAN NASAL INDEX OF EGYPTIANS AT VARIOUS PERIODS. 

(from broca.) 



Nasal Index. Cranial Index. 

Fourth Dynasty 47-93 76.40 

Eleventh Dynasty 48. 

Eighteenth Dynasty 48. 

Later Dynasties (up to the Ptolemys) 47. 

Average of Ancient Egypt 47. 

Modern Egypt (Kopts) 47. 



43 75.40 

77 76.02 

28 73.38 

88 75.58 



15 76.39 

The persistence of the nasal index has not been less re- 



THE NOSE 10 1 

markable among the peoples who, from the most remote 
periods, have occupied the soil of France. 

For the Mammoth Period, Broca has only two skulls from 
Eyzies, whose indices were 48.98 and 45.09. The mean in- 
dex of these would be 47, but, as Broca points out, the true 
average index is the index of the means and not the mean of 
the indices ; as the nasal heights in these cases were 24 and 22 
(mean 23), and the breadths 51 and 49 (mean 50), the index 
of the means is 46. 

The neolithic series is not homogeneous, but we may 
conclude that the peoples of the Polished-Stone Age, so far 
as is known, were leptorhine. 

MEAN NASAL INDEX OF ANCIENT AND MODERN POPULA- 
TIONS OF FRANCE. 
(from broca.) 

Nasal Index. Cranial Index. 

Mammoth Period (Eyzies) 46 74-25 

Neolithic Period 46.93 75. or 

Bronze Age (Orrony) 46.89 79.26 

Gauls of the Iron Age 45-68 76.93 

Gallo-Romans (Third and Fourth Century) 46.74 78.55 

Merovingians (Seventh Century) 48.87 76.36 

Parisians (Twelfth Century) 48.25 79. 18 

" (Sixteenth Century) 47«97 79-56 

" (Nineteenth Century) 46.81 79-44 

The low index remains constant through the Bronze Age. 
The fifteen Gaulish skulls of the Iron Age measured by 
Broca belonged to at least a century before the conquest by 
Caesar. The Roman invasion did not modify the index. 

Most of the Merovingian skulls came from a cemetery at 
Chelles. The interment belonged to somewhat different 
dates, but it is probable that most of the skulls belong to 
the second half of the seventh century. Eleven more 
ancient skulls, that were found in a lower layer, have a 
mean index of 51.52; the more recent series of forty-four 



102 THE STUDY OF MAN 

skulls average 48.83; the total mean of the Chellian skulls 
being 49. 36. The nasal index of some Merovingian skulls 
found at Champlieu descends to 47.58. 

Amid all these variations one fact shines clear, that in all 
the Merovingian graves the nasal index is markedly above 
that of the earlier populations of France. (The Franks then 
brought to the country, which received its name from them, 
a new nasal type. In any case it is certain that the Franks 
had a nasal index of over 48, consequently they were not 
leptorhine like the people of Western Europe, but mesorhine 
like the Mongolic peoples. They belonged to the white- 
skinned, fair-haired, Teutonic race, but must be regarded as 
a distinct variety of it. There is no reason to believe that 
we have here traces of those remnants of the mesorhinic 
hordes of Attila who fled towards Pannonia. 

Wherever they came from, or however they acquired their 
nose, the arrival of the Franks augmented in a marked man- 
ner the mean nasal index of the population of Southern 
Gaul. 

We will now follow the modifications of the nasal index 
in later periods. Under the three Frankish kings Paris be- 
came the capital of Neustria. The aristocratic class congre- 
gated there and were so numerous as to escape better than 
elsewhere the effects of mixture. In the twelfth century 
the mean nasal index of the Parisians was still mesorhinic, 
but it had already descended from 48.87, the mean number 
of the Merovingians, to 48.25 — an index that is nearly lepto- 
rhine. In the succeeding centuries it continued to diminish, 
and at present it has returned to the figure (46.81) that it 
had before the Frankish period, and the influence of the 
foreign race has now disappeared from the mean nasal 
index. 

Concerning the nasal bones it may be noted that among 



THE NOSE 103 

the white races they are usually arched and prominent ; 
among the yellow races, the Malays, and the Negroes, they 
are flat. They are often, in addition, short and very broad 
among the Negroes, and frequently long and narrow among 







Pig. 14. 
The Lower Border of the Apertura Pyriformis of Orang-Utan ; from Hovorka. 

the Chinese. The bridge of the nose is almost always flat 
in infants, and, as we have just seen, it usually remains so in 
the lower races, and it frequently also persists in this condi- 
tion in women of higher races. 

Lastly, I must draw attention to the variations that occur 
in the lower margin of the apertura pyriformis. 

In the apes the floor of the nasal cavity passes insensibly 
on to the surface of the upper jaw, and there is consequently 
no definite inferior border to the nasal aperture. This con- 
dition may obtain among human skulls, and it is known by 
the name of simian groove. 

Of more frequent occurrence than the last is the condition 
which is characteristic of the human infant, in which the 
floor of the nasal chamber passes by a variable but distinct 
angle on to the surface of the maxilla. This is termed the 
forvia infantilis. 

The characteristic human condition is that in which the 
lower border of the pyriform aperture is formed by a dis- 
tinct thin ridge which sharply cuts off the floor of the nasal 
cavity from the alveolar portion of the maxilla. This is the 
forma anthropina. 



104 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



In some skulls there is a pair of depressions immediately 
external to the lower border of the apertura pyriformis. 
These are known as the fosses pre7tasales. 




Fig. 15. 

The Four Types of the Lower Border of the Apertura Pyriformis in Man ; 

from Hovorka. 

a. Forma Anthropina (Lower Austrian, 30 years old); b. Fossae Prenasales (Bavarian, 
49 years old) ; c. Forma Infantilis (child, 3^ years old) ; d. Simian Groove (Java- 
nese, 28 years old). 

It frequently happens that a skull with 2i forma infantilis 
may be transitional between the simian groove on the one 
hand or between a forma prenasalis or a forma anthropina 
on the other. No well-defined limits separate these various 
conditions. 

Hovorka * gives the following statistics concerning the 
distribution of these varieties among various peoples : 

No. examined. 

IQI Germans. 



187 
57 
82 

34 
16 

133 

71 
16 

15 
22 
10 

93 

927 



Cechs . . . . 
Austrians , 
Russians . 
Magyars . 
Gypsies . . 
Greeks . . . 
Italians . . 
Mummies 
Chinese . . 
Malays. . . 
Peruvians 
Negroes. . 



Anthrop. 


Prenasal. 


Infant. 


Simian 


131 


10 


44 


6 


117 


21 


40 


9 


49 


2 


4 


2 


46 


14 


18 


4 


16 


5 


9 


4 


II 


I 


2 


2 


83 


4 


42 


4 


54 


2 


15 


— 


9 


— 


6 


I 


5 


3 


6 


I 


7 


2 


8 


5 


5 


I 


4 


— 


24 


9 


25 


35 



557 74 223 73 

' O. Hovorka (Edl. von Zderas), Die yEussere Nase, eine anatomisch-anthro- 
pologische Studie, Vienna, 1893. (This paper contains an extensive bibliog- 
raphy.) 



THE NOSE 105 

C^peaking in general terms one may say that the simian 
groove is most frequent in the Negroes, Australians, and the 
black races generally. The infantile condition is com.mon 
among Negroes, the yellow races, and Southern Europeans. 
The fossae prenasales are also frequent among the yellow 
races, while the forma anthropina is characteristic of the 
Northern Europeans.' 

^ Since the above was in type, Professor A. Macalister has written a paper on 
"The Apertura Pyriformis" {Journ. Anat. and Phys.^ xxxii., January, 1898, 
p. 223), in which he describes these four conditions, to which he gives the fol- 
lowing names : Orj'gmocraspedote (simian groove), Amblycraspedote (forma 
infantilis), Bothrocraspedote (fossae prenasales), Oxycraspedote (forma anthro- 
pina). 



CHAPTER V 

THE ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE DORDOGNE 

DISTRICT 

1HAVE previously alluded to the brilliant ethnographical 
work done by Dr. Collignon/ and I have made an ab- 
stract of his researches in the Dordogne District of West 
Central France in order to demonstrate the lines upon which 
such inquiries should be conducted, and to illustrate the re- 
sults that follow from a blending of anthropological investi- 
gations with the records of history. We have here a very 
happy example of an anthropological analysis which supplies 
the data for a subsequent historical synthesis. 

The region under consideration consists partly of the cal- 
careous beds and partly of primitive rocks of the Central 
Plateau of France; the limiting line between them is shown 
on the map(Fig. 19); to the east it passes into the mountainous 
mass of Auvergne. The five Departments which constitute 
this region are traversed from east to west by the gradually 
decreasing elevations of the Limousin Mountains, which 
serve as barriers between the three basins of the Dordogne, 
or rather of its right affluents, the Dronne, Isle, Vezere, and 
Correze ; of the Charente and of the left affluents of the 
Loire, the Vienne, Gartempe, Creuse, and Cher. A line 
running roughly north and south, starting at the junction 

' R. Collignon, "Anthropologic de la France: Dordogne. Charente, Cor- 
reze, Creuse, Haute- Vienne," Mem. Soc. cVAnth. de Paris (3), i., 1894. 

106 



ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE DORDOGNE DISTRICT lO/ 

of Charente and Haute-Vienne and passing not far to the 
east of P^rigueux, would separate the fertile district to the 
west from the poor lands to the east. At certain points in 
the latter, as in the Limousin, the valleys are rich, but the 
uplands are infertile, and produce only chestnuts and scanty 
cereals. 



/ N 







Fig. i6. 
Sketch Map of the Dordogne District. 



The physical features of the population studied by Dr. 
Collignon are mainly those of the conscripts for the xii® 
Corps d'arm^e, who are recruited from these five Depart- 
ments. 



io8 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



The characters are given in the order of importance that 
Dr. Collignon allocates to each. 

CEPHALIC INDEX. 

This index is the ratio of the breadth of the head to its 
greatest length, the latter being taken as lOO. In dealing 
with skulls, anthropologists usually arrange the indices in 
three groups: (i) Dolichocephals, with an index of less than 
75 ; (2) Mesaticephals, with an index between 75 and 80; (3) 
Brachycephals, having an index of over 80. It is the prac- 
tice of some anthropologists to deduct two units from the 
corresponding index of the living head so as to reduce the 
cephalic to the cranial index. 

There is a tendency at present not to lay too much stress 
upon these purely empirical divisions, and some would raise 
the upper limit of dolichocephaly two or three units. 

The following table gives the distribution of the cephalic 
indices in the five Departments ; in the case of Dordogne a 
further analysis is made, which proves that the southern 
part of that Department is much more brachycephalic than 
the northern. The mean index of this Department, if alone 
considered, gives extremely little information. 

CEPHALIC INDEX— PROPORTION PER CENT. 





CHA- 
RENTE. 


HAUTE- 
VIENNE. 


CREUSE. 


CORRfeZE. 


DOR- 
DOGNE. 


NORTH 

DOR- 
DOGNE. 


SOUTH 
DOR- 
DOGNE. 


67-69 


.17 








.22 


.30 




70-74 


5.60 


3.78 


.58 


.... 


5-95 


8.24 


.... 


75-79 


41-95 


37.81 


19.24 


6.90 


38.30 


48.53 


11.54 


80-84 


41.82 


42.86 


62.38 


43-27 


39-46 


37-63 


44-22 


85-89 


10.85 


14.71 


16.92 


41-73 


13-83 


5.00 


39.92 


90-94 


•50 


.84 


.88 


7-93 


2.13 


•30 


6.93 


95-97 











.17 


.11 


.... 


•39 


Mean index 


80.43 


80.93 


82.16 


84-93 


80.70 









ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE DORDOGNE DISTRICT IO9 

It is evident that this table indicates considerable differ- 
ences in the ethnic constitution of each Department. Tak- 
ing the extremes, we have, on the one hand. North Dordogne 
with its 8.5 per cent, of indices below 75, or Charente with 
5.7 per cent, and only .5 per cent, of ultrabrachycephals, 
and Correze on the other, which has no dolichocephal below 
75, but has 8.1 per cent, of indices over 90. 

Taken as they stand, the great majority of these indices 
fall into the brachycephalic division, while very few are doli- 
chocephalic. 

The mean index of the French population being 83.57, 
Dr. CoUignon, in order to simplify matters, describes as 
brachycephals those indices above 83. The cantons which 
come under this grouping form a compact mass to the south 
and south-east, as is seen in the map on the following page. 
To the north there are two islands in which the index does 
not exceed 83.8. 

Inversely, and as a matter of convenience, he regards as 
dolichocephalic all the regions in which the index is less than 
80. Two large groups of dolichocephalic cantons are isolated 
by this means ; the more important covers two-thirds of the 
Department of Dordogne (the valleys of the Isle and of the 
Dronne), and about one-half of Charente, mainly to the south 
and south-east. The other has Limoges for a centre and 
the seven cantons that surround it. 

In the narrow band of country between these two groups 
the index is 81. 

This clearly defined distribution is of the greatest import- 
ance, for alone it provides a key to the local ethnography. 

Another point not less worthy of attention is the clear 
manner in which these two head types are separated : (i) be- 
tween the two Departments of Dordogne and Correze; (2) 
between the two portions of Dordogne which are separated 
by the rivers Vezere and Dordogne. 



// 



no 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



As a matter of fact the boundary between the two Depart- 
ments of Dordogne and Correze was formerly precisely that 
between Perigord and Limousin, and in earlier times be- 
tween the Petrocorii and Lemovices. To the right of this 
entirely conventional frontier the indices run from 85.4 to 
87.3, while to the left they vary from 78.7 to 81.4, but there 




Fig. 17. 

The Distribution of the Cephalic Index in the Dordogne District ; 

after Collignon. 

Areas with an index of less than 80, shaded ; those between 80 and 83, 
left blank ; those over 83, cross-hatched. 



is nothing in history to explain this discrepancy. The ex- 
planation appears to be that well before the Conquest the 
two peoples differed in race, the one being what Caesar called 



ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE DORDOGNE DISTRICT III 

Celts, the other probably belonging to the people whom he 
named Aquitainians. 

The southern portion of Dordogne is also brachycephalic 
and Celtic, and so Dr. Collignon is inclined to think that it 
did not form part of the territory of the Petrocorii, but that 
it should be divided among the Nitiobriges and Cadurci, 
whose equally brachycephalic descendants still people Lot- 
et-Garonne and Lot. 

Another line of evidence supports this conclusion. It is 
known that the primitive episcopal dioceses corresponded to 
the territories of the ancient Roman civitates, since a bishop 
was established in each city by the emperors. Whilst the 
northern, eastern, and western frontiers of the diocese of 
Perigueux correspond very closely with those of the modern 
Department, the region south of the Vezere belongs to the 
Bishop of Cahors, which tends to show that the natives of 
the south of Dordogne are the descendants not of the 
Petrocorii, but of the Cadurci. 

The differences between the two parts of Limousin, of 
which the one forms part of Correze and the other the south 
of Haute- Vienne, can be explained in an analogous manner. 
The former is brown and brachycephalic, while the latter is 
fair and dolichocephalic. 

One may well believe that the Lemovices, those of the 
neighbourhood of Limoges, were no more Petrocorii than 
Celtae, but a fair people of Belgic or Germanic origin, estab- 
lished in Celtica, who had overlorded the ancient brachy- 
cephalic people who there preceded them. 

Inversely, Briva-Curetia, another old Gaulish town of 
Limousin, was the centre of gravitation of the first inhabit- 
ants, if not their capital. 

In Charente there is only one canton in which the mean 
index rises over 83. In this canton of Chabanais is the 
small village of Chassenom on the left bank of the Vienne. 



112 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



It is interesting to see the old Celtic race here, preserved 
with a relative purity, still grouped around the ruins of its 
oppidum (Cassinodunum), where, compared with the rest of 
the Department, it appears as an island surrounded by the 
combined flood of brown and fair dolichocephals. 

COLOUR OF THE HAIR AND EYES. 

A statistical inquiry concerning the distribution of the 
colours of the eyes and hair leads to the following results. 
The browns predominate markedly over the blonds. But 
for a group of cantons in Creuse all the district should be 
ranged under the brown or moderately brown categories. 

In the following table the numbers are in relation to lOO; 
the differences between lOO and the fairs and the darks re- 
present the eyes and hair of intermediate tint : 



Haute-Vienne . 

Creuse 

Charente 

Correze 

Dordogne 



EYES. 




HAIR. 




HALF-SUM OF 
EYES AND HAIR. 


Blue. 


Dark. 


Fair. 


Dark 

and 

Black. 


Black 
only. 


Light. 


Dark. 


36.7 

34-7 
33-8 
29.5 
34-2 


24.6 

23-3 
23.6 

23-3 
23.6 


21.8 
21.9 
17.2 

15-4 
15.0 


49.6 

53.9 
57.6 

58.4 
66.3 


5-25 

6.12 

5.80 

3-8o 
12.05 


29.2 
28.3 

25-5 
22.3 
24.6 


37.1 
38.6 
40.6 
40.9 
45.0 



EXCESS 

OF 

DARK 

OVER 

LIGHT. 



7.9 
10.3 

15.1 

18.6 
20.4 



On comparing this table with the map, it will be seen 
that although Dordogne has an absolute greater number of 
blonds than Correze it is relatively darker, owing to the fact 
that the darks are greatly in excess in certain cantons ; in 
other words, Dordogne is more patchy and Correze more 
uniform in the distribution of their hair and eye colours. It 
is evident that in using the word blond, this term is employed 
in only a relative sense. It is with this reserve and for the 



ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE DORDOGNE DISTRICT II3 

sake of convenience that the term blond will be employed. 
In the most blond group, that in the neighbourhood of 
Aubusson in Creuse, the blonds amount to only 33.6 per 
cent. — that is to say, one-third. 



Fig. 18. 

The Distribution of Combined Hair and Eye Colour in the Dordogne District ; 

after Collignon. 
Excess of browns from o to lo, shaded ; lo to 30, blank ; over 30, cross-hatched. 

In order to gain a clear conception of the distribution of 
the hair and eye colours, it will be simpler to assume the 
whole region as originally inhabited by a brown population, 
and then to follow the probable route of the blonds. 

The most important spot where the blond type is best 
preserved is the east of the Department of Creuse, especially 



114 ' '^^^ STUDY OF MAN 

the plateau of Gentioux and the upper basin of the river 
Cher and of its left affluents. 

The second relatively blond region has Limoges for its 
centre. In certain spots the type is preserved with a re- 
markable purity, particularly among the women. Dr. Col- 
lignon was very much struck with the resemblance of these 
to the women of Cotentin in Normandy. It appears that 
the blonds radiate from Limoges in four directions: (i) to- 
wards the north in the direction of the old Roman road of 
Argentomagus and Avaricum (xA^rgentan and Bourges), later 
the route to Paris — that is to say, along the road which 
united this town with the great blond centres of the north 
of France; (2) towards the east where it joins with blonds 
of the Cher region ; (3) to the west in the direction of An- 
gouleme ; and (4) southwards towards Perigueux. 

The third route of blond immigration would be the route 
from Paris to Bordeaux through Angouleme. 

Limoges formed a centre, and towards the four points of 
the compass lay four very ancient and important towns, 
Avaricum (Bourges), Gergovia (Clermont), Vesuna (Peri- 
gueux), and Ecolisma (Angouleme). 

The latter town was the only one of the four that was not 
united to Limoges either by a Roman road of the first order, 
or later by a postal route ; and we find that in the region 
between these towns the blonds are deficient. The import- 
ance of the communications between Limoges and Bordeaux 
through Perigueux is affirmed by the long line of blonds 
which occur along that route. To take a biological simile, 
Limoges represents a ganglion protruding its nerve fibres in 
all directions towards other similar ganglia. 

The distribution of black hair is worthy of note. In 
Dordogne it is marked in la Double, in the valleys of the 
rivers Dordogne, Isle, and Dronne. Secondary centres ex- 
tend towards the north of Charente and of Creuse. There 



ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE DORDOGNE DISTRICT II5 

is thus a current inverse to that of the blonds. The great 
pressure of blonds came from the north-east and from the 
north ; it traversed the district obliquely in a north-east to 
south-west line. Inversely the black-haired race appears to 
be massed in the south-west, and to be distributed, with a 
gradually decreasing importance, towards the north-east and 

north. 

STATURE. 

The measurements of the stature are not so instructive 
from a racial point of view as might have been expected. 

All the tall statures are massed at the circumference of 
the four Departments of which the statistics are available, 
with the exception of an important centre about Limoges. 
In the map the distribution of the heights over 1640 mm. 
(5 ft. \\ in.) is shown by the vertical lines. In mapping the 
distribution of the statures under 1610 mm. (5 ft. 3|- in.) it 
is seen that besides several scattered areas towards the south 
of the district under discussion, there is a large central area 
which, following the example of Broca, who found a similar 
area of a dwarfed population in Basse Bretagne, Dr. Colli- 
gnon calls ** the Limousin black spot " (" /^ tdche noire 
limoiisin "). 

In other cantons less than 10 per cent, of the statures have 
under 1600 mm. (5 ft. 3 in.), those in the black spot have 
without exception over 30 per cent. ; eight cantons have 
more than 40 per cent., one has 54.7 per cent., while that 
of Saint Mathieu has 67.6 per cent, less than 1600 mm., four 
below 1540 mm., and 8.8 per cent, below 1500 mm. (4 ft. 
II in.). True dwarfs, that is, those with a stature below 
1500 mm., are exceptional everywhere. 

These figures are not due to an accidental and temporary 
selection, as the following figures of Bondin prove, which 
extended over a period of thirty years (i 831- i860). These 
tables show that Dordogne, Correze, and Haute-Vienne are 



ii6 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



among the four Departments in the whole of France which 
have the greatest number of exemptions from conscription 




Fig. 19. 

The Distribution of Stature in the Dordogne District (the Department of 

Creuse is Omitted) ; after Collignon. 

Stature less than 161 cm. (5 ft. 3^ in.), cross-hatched ; between 161 and 164 cm., blank; 
from 164 C5 ft. 4^ in.) to 166 cm. (5 ft. 5% in.), shaded. The line A B separates 
the granites and crystalline rocks on the east from the calcareous beds on the west. 

owing to deficiency of stature. The neighbouring Depart- 
ment of Puy-de-D6me occupies the eighty-fourth rank, with 
128 exemptions. 



Creuse 

Charente 

Dordogne. . . . 

Correze 

Haute-Vienne 



EXEMPTIONS 
PER 1000. 



89 

124 

168 



RANK 
IN FRANCE. 



63 

82 

83 
85 

86 



Creuse 

Correze 

Charente 

Dordogne. . . . 
Haute-Vienne 



HEIGHTS OF 
1732 PER 1000. 



44 
43 
41 
39 
31.6 



RANK 
IN FRANCE. 



74 
77 
79 
80 
86 



ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE DORDOGNE DISTRICT W] 

Inversely the high statures are also at a minimum, Haute- 
Vienne having the least proportion of tall people and the 
greatest population of short people of any Department of 
France. 

Bondin and Broca considered that this remarkable short- 
ness was purely a question of race, the normal smallness of 
the brachycephals. This very simple explanation will no 
longer suffice, in the presence of the dolichocephaly proved 
for Dordogne, Charente, and Haute-Vienne. If we com- 
pare the maps of the distribution of the cephalic index with 
those of colour and stature, and mentally superimpose them, 
we find that there is absolutely not a shadow of a relation 
between them. The " black spot " extends alike over the 
brachycephals of Correze, the brown dolichocephals of Dor- 
dogne, and the fair dolichocephals of Haute-Vienne. There 
is then no relation between this demonstrated phenomenon 
and race. 

'Some anthropologists seek a cause in the geological char- 
acter of the soil; but here as in Brittany and Cotentin it 
explains nothing. It is true that the line of separation be- 
tween the granites and crystalline rocks on the east and 
the calcareous beds on the west runs pretty closely along 
the southern border of the black spot; but we also find the 
greatest number of high statures on the granites, and the low 
statures flourish equally well on the Liassic and Cretaceous 
calcareous beds of Sarladais and Riberacois. 

The only plausible explanation is the social condition, and 
in this case it is summed up in the expressive French term 
[la viisercy The steep slopes and barren soil only produce 
poor cereals, rye, barley, and buckwheat, ^he natives live 
on these, and on milk and chestnuts. Communication is 
difficult ; no great tillage as in the fertile valleys of the 
Vienne and Gartempe, none of the larger industries that 
enrich a people.- ** In the cantons of Vigeois, Uzerche, and 



Il8 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Treignac in Correze," writes M. Vacher, " the population is 

settled in confined valleys, in deep gorges receiving little 

light and air, with an impermeable subsoil and marshy 

ground." jIn a poor country the most elementary hygiene 

is unknown, the death-rate is raised, and organic defects are 

more frequent than elsewhere? One of the more direct 

corollaries of misery is I ignorance\ In many other parts of 

France, such as in the Hautes-Alpes and Sologne, poverty 

is allied with ignorance, and results in the degeneration of 

the race. 

THE NASAL INDEX. 

The nasal index is the ratio of the breadth of the wings 
of the nose to its length, the latter being measured from the 
root of the nose to where the septum passes into the upper 
lip. The narrow noses (leptorhines) are those with an index 
below 70; the mesorhines range from 70 to 85; while the 
broad noses (platyrhines) are those above 85. 

The mean nasal index is 68.8, but the individual range is 
enormous, 49.9 to 96.4, that is, more than 46 units. As a 
whole, the mesorhine indices, i. e., those over 70, are massed 
in the centre of the five Departments. 

This distribution follows in the main that of the stature. 
But why ? Simply in accordance with a law previously thus 
formulated by Collignon : " In a given race, leptorhiny is in 
direct relation to stature ; the higher this is raised the longer 
the nose, the lower the height the more the nose tends to 
mesorhiny. " ^ 

A careful consideration of the data tends to show that, 
independent of stature, the brachycephals possess a mean 
nasal index of about 69, that is to say, very near mesorhiny, 
which is in agreement with previous investigations. The 
dolichocephalic races are more leptorhine. 

^ "Etude anthropometrique elementaire des principales Races de France," 
Bull. Soc. d'Anthrop. de Paris, 1883, p. 508. 



ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE DORDOGNE DISTRICT I I9 

(One result of this inquiry is that the value of the nasal 
index has received a serious blow. Certainly this character 
is very important for the discrimination of the great trunks 
of mankind, as has been abundantly proved in anthropo- 
logical investigations in India, but so far as the European 
nations are concerned it is incontestable that the nasal index 
has only a subsidiary and relative value. 

HEIGHT INDICES OF THE CRANIUM. 

The importance of the vertical height of the cranium as a 
racial character has been emphasised by Virchow, but Col- 
lignon was the first to study this factor in the living. The 
two height indices are obtained by comparing the total 
height of the head measured from the vertex to the centre 
of the ear-hole with, (i) the length of the head, and (2) its 
greatest breadth, each of these two diameters being taken 
as 100. 

The indices are classified as follows : 



Platycephals 
Mesocephals 
Hypsicephals 



HEIGHT-LENGTH 
INDEX. 



-67 
67 — 70 

70 + 



HEIGHT-BREADTH 
INDEX. 



-83 
83-85 
85 + 



A really high skull, if it is very broad, may appear rela- 
tively low, or a low, but very narrow head, may appear de- 
cidedly hypsicephalic. Hence the necessity to consider first 
the cephalic index, and thereby to recognise the normal and 
harmonic fluctuations of the inverse variations of these two 
vertical indices. 

Dr. Collignon has plotted the distribution of these indices 
for the Department of Dordogne alone. We have seen that 
the northern cantons are what he termed dolichocephalic. 



120 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



and the southern are brachycephalic. The length-height in- 
dex of the former varies from 65 to 68, and of the latter 
from 70 to 72. Taking the mean at 66 and 70 respectively, 
it follows that the dolichocephals are platycephalic and the 
brachycephals hypsicephalic ; but this platycephaly is a true 
flattening of the skull, and is not merely due to a lengthen- 
ing of the cranium, as it is not the most dolichocephalic 
cantons that are the most platycephalic. 




Fig, 20, Fig. 21. 

Distribution of the Height-length In- Distribution of the Height-breadth In- 
dex in Dordogne ; after Collignon. dex in Dordogne ; after Collignon. 

70 -f- Hypsicephalic (shaded) 85 + 

67 - 70 Mesocephalic (blank) 83 - 85 

- 67 Platycephalic (cross-hatched) 81 — 83 

The oblique band enclosed with a thick line corresponds to the division between 
the dolichocephals and brachycephals. (See Fig. 17.) 



On the other hand, all the brachycephalic cantons have 
a height-breadth index of from 8i to 84, that is, they are, 
or appear to be, platycephalic and mesocephalic, but their 
mean is mesocephalic. 

The mixed race which inhabits the zone between the 
brachycephals and dolichocephals (cephalic index 80-82) is 



ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE DORDOGNE DISTRICT 121 

also intermediate with a height-breadth index of 83-85, but 
the doHchocephals fall into two groups; the one with indices 
from 85 to Zj are hypsicephalic, the others, like the brachy- 
cephals, are mesocephalic and platycephalic. 

Thus the platycephaly of the valley of the Isle is estab- 
lished. 

The brachycephals are only false platycephals owing to 
an exaggeration of the transverse diameter. 

Without going into further details, we may now make an 
attempt to unravel the ethnology of these five Departments. 
Taking the three characters of cephalic index, colour, and 
stature, we can distinguish : short and dark or tall and fair 
brachycephals; fair, tall dolichocephals and dark doHcho- 
cephals. 

The brachycephals occupy all the region south of the 
rivers Dordogne and Vezere, the whole of the Department 
of Correze and the east of that of Creuse. The brown 
brachycephalic type extends to the mountainous region of 
Auvergne, to the east of France and to the south of Ger- 
many. This race of short, dark brachycephals is a well- 
marked type which has received several names. Dr. 
CoUignon, for want of a better term, adopts Broca's 
designation of Celts, as the founder of French anthropology 
considered that these were essentially the Celtas of Csesar. 
They are often called Auvergnats. The tall, fair variety is 
due to a crossing of this type with the fair race. A similar 
racial mixture occurs in Lorraine. 

The fair dolichocephals inhabit the upper valley of the 
Cher; the neighbourhood of Limoges, whence they spread 
to the south, following the plateaux that separate the valleys 
of the Isle and of the Dordogne; and also the north of 
Charente, Angouleme, and in general along the very ancient 
route between Paris and Bordeaux. These are the modified 



122 THE STUDY OF MAN 

descendants of the tall, fair, dolichocephalic race of North 
Europe. Dr. Collignon speaks of it as the Hallstadt race. 

The brown dolichocephals require further analysis. 

(i) A type can be distinguished which is characterised by 
its relative platycephaly, the extreme broadening of the face, 
a prominent chin, low orbits, and by the dark colour of the 
skin and hair. As it is usual in Europe to correlate a long, 
narrow face with a long head, and a short, broad face with a 
rounded head, the association, as in this case, of a long head 
with a broad face forms what is termed a disharmony. In 
the fair dolichocephals, on the other hand, the head is high, 
the face narrow, the chin moderately prominent, the orbits 
normal, the skin, hair, and eyes fair. It is obvious that 
these two races are entirely distinct. 

(2) A narrow-faced dolichocephal with a high head can be 
distinguished, but Dr. Collignon believes that it is a cross 
between two races, the brown and the fair dolichocephals. 

(This is a very favourable combination, and gives rise to a 
beautiful variety of man. 

(3) A rare but recognisable type, with an extraordinarily 
narrow and elongated face, a retreating forehead, projecting 
jaws, and retreating chin ; the concave nose is so broad as to 
be nearly platyrhine, the hair and skin are dark. 

Putting the second of these two varieties out of count, 
there only remain the brown dolichocephal with a dishar- 
monic face, and that with a retreating chin. They both 
live in the basin of the Isle and its affluents, as much in 
Charente as in Dordogne. 

From numerous other investigations we know that the 
Neolithic dolichocephals of Western and Southern Europe 
were a slight people with brown hair. They constitute the 
Mediterranean race of Sergi, the western branch being gen- 
erally termed Iberians. The ancient cave-men of France 
belong to the same race ; by comparing certain indices of 



ETHXOGRAPHY OF THE DORDOGNE DISTRICT 1 23 



these with the first group of our brown doHchocephals, we 
find a remarkable correspondence * : 



Caverne de Fhomme mort. 
Old man of Cro-Magnon . 
Recent Dordogne 



CEPHALIC INDEX. 



Dolicho. 



HEIGHT-LENGTH 
INDEX. 



Platyceph, 



HEIGHT-BREADTH 
INDEX. 



Mesoceph. 

Platy. 

Platy. & Meso. 



Further, the Cro-Magnon man had a disharmonic face; 
this is also characteristic of the Neolithic dolichocephal of 
Laugerie, and it survives in their descendants in the valley 
of the Isle. 

The remaining brown dolichocephalic type, with its low- 
typed, long, narrow, prognathous face, is considered by Dr. 
CoUignon to be the far-removed descendants of the Quarter- 
nary race of Canstadt and Spy. The same type has been 
recognised by him in Tunis among the Berbers of Djerid 
(his race Gettile), as well as in Dordogne and in the south of 
Charente ; that is to say, in places still occupied by the de- 
scendants of the race of Cro-Magnon. It might be expected 
that the very ancient race of Canstadt and the later race 
of Cro-Magnon were together beaten back by the great pre- 
historic invasions of Western Europe. 

A few words will suffice to trace the prehistoric settle- 
ments and racial movements that have occurred in this 
district. 

[The earliest inhabitants were probably the people with 
(retreadng chins. According to the opinion of Dr. CoUi- 
gnon these were kinsmen to Palaeolithic man. At the present 
day, as is only to be expected, this type is very rarely met 
with in anything like purity, and it is very difficult to isolate 
it statistically. 

' These indices are taken from a subsequent memoir by Dr. Collignon 
(Mem. Soc. d'Anth. de Paris), i. (36 ser.), 1895, pp. 94, 95. 



124 ^^-^ STUDY OF MAN 

The whole west of Europe was later occupied by the 
brown dolichocephals, the Iberian branch of the great Med- 
iterranean race, of which the Cro-Magnon man was a variety. 
They buried their dead in the caves of the valleys of the 
Vezere, Isle, and Dronne. Judging from their art they 
were a skilful people, and not devoid of culture: 

"(Later he pictured an aurochs — later he pictured a bear — 
Pictured the sabre-toothed tiger dragging a man to his lair — 
Pictured the mountainous mammoth, hairy, abhorrent, alone — 
Out of the love that he bore them, scribing them clearly on 
bone." ' 

There, protected in their barren, rocky valleys, weathering 
the storm of race conflict, unsubmerged by waves of race 
migration, still survive the children of early Neolithic man. 

Also in Neolithic times a short, dark brachycephalic folk 
came into France from the east by two routes flowing north 
and south of the Alps. The invasion followed the left bank 
of the Danube, entered the valley of the Rhine, and later 
spread into France through the pass of Belfort and by the 
lower Moselle. A second, probably later and less import- 
ant, invasion crossed the river to reach Upper Italy and 
Switzerland, and thence gained the valley of the Rhone. 
Thus their migration has been from east to west. 

When the invasions came of the tall, fair dolichocephals, 
Kymri, Gauls, Cimbrians, Burgundians, Visigoths, Franks, 
etc., they more particularly followed a course parallel to the 
North Sea. From an ill-determined point to the north-east 
or north they advanced invariably along the plains, probably 
on account of the <;hariots^ which they always brought with 
them. After having covered the plains of North Germany, 
where since then their descendants have always lived, and 
which became a second centre for emigrations, they passed 

' Rudyard Kipling, " The Story of Ung," The Seven Seas, 1896. 



ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE DORDOGNE DISTRICT 1 25 

to the north of the Black Forest to scatter upon the Nether- 
lands and Flanders, the valley of the Seine and that of the 
Rhine. Thence their swarms were divided by the central 
plateau of France ; one stream being diverted into Italy, the 
other into Spain, and thence to North Africa. 

The Roman conquest scarcely, if at all, affected the popu- 
lation of these five Departments, and it is more than certain 
that since then no foreign element has produced any result 
that can be traced, for all the barbarians, as well as the 
English, belonged to the fair race. 

In a subsequent memoir on the anthropology of the South- 
west of France {Mem. Soc. d' Anthrop. de Paris, i., 3^ ser., 
4° fascic, 1895), Dr. Collignon sums up his conclusions as 
follows : 

Such is, after an examination of anatomical characters, 
the distribution of the races in the south-west of our country. 
Is it possible to draw therefrom reliable indications of what 
it was formerly ? Regarding this we may lay down this 
rule : (When a race is well seated in a region, fixed to the 
soil by agriculture, acclimatised by natural selection and 
sufficiently dense, it opposes (for the most precise observa- 
tions confirm it) an enormous resistance to absorption by 
the newcomers, whoever they may be!\ 

(The most striking example of this stability of seated 
races, of this force of inertia which renders them victorious, 
is certainly presented to us by Egypt. The modern Fellah dif- 
fers in nowise from his ancestors of several millenniums ago, 
who lived at the times of Thothmes and Rameses, although, 
according to the calculations of M. Hamy, slavery had in- 
troduced upon the borders of the Nile more than twenty 
millions of negroes. These, in a climate which at first sight 
would be favourable to their acclimatisation, were not able 
to perpetuate their race, either directly or indirectly, that 
is to say, by crossing. All the more reason, one may say. 



,v^ 



126 THE STUDY OF MAN 

that the same can be said of the historic conquerors of this 
unfortunate country, froin the Hyksos and the Persians 
down to the Turks and the latest comers, the EngHsh. Jhe 
waves of foreign blood that have spread over Egypt have 
disappeared never to return^ 

The reasons are many. If the aboriginal race is more 
numerous than its invaders, and this is nearly always the 
case, it cannot be entirely destroyed ; whatever be the 
slaughter which accompanies the conquest, the women and 
the children are preserved. The importance of the subse- 
quent crossings cannot then, at the maximum, attain more 
than one third. The stable condition that follows puts then, 
ipso facto, the newcomer in a minority from the commence- 
ment of the conquest, the work of selection by acclimatisa- 
tion does the rest. It is a matter of a few generations. 

The only case where the occupation can be definitive is 
that of an invasion by a very superior race emigrating with 
(women and children )to a region peopled by nomads or true 
savages, such as the occupation of the United States or of 
Australia by the Europeans. (In Canada, despite the politi- 
cal occupation and the incessant arrival of emigrants of their 
own blood, the English are absolutely balanced by the old 
(French element, who were masters of the soil before their 
arrival. 

But the presence of woman at the time of a conquest, if 
she is indispensable to a real and definitive colonisation, 
since alone it ensures the perpetuity of pure descendants, is 
not, however, sufficient. Except in a savage country, the 
women of the conquering party would always be in a minor- 
ity. Even in the case where restrictive laws would assure 
to their progeny particular privileges, making a kind of 
aristocracy, it could never happen that there would be only 
two strata of the population, a victorious aristocracy super- 
imposed upon a conquered democracy. We know the fate 



ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE DORDOGNE DISTRICT 12/ 

of all aristocracies, ^heir grandeur is their ruin; they sur- 
vive thanks only to foreign relays, and on an average dis- 
appear in three or four centuries. (One cannot say " Vcb 
vzctis, "hut " V(2 victoribus " ; everything comes to him who 
waits^ 

KThe Romans did not systematically depopulate Gaul — her 
submission satisfied them ; the distribution of races at the 
time of the Roman peace did not undergo other changes 
than those which could operate quite locally, the deporting 
of a too obstreperous people or colonising by veterans. The 
Barbarians passed like a torrent, they destroyed much, but 
they have not made in their campaigns a true colonisation, 
" ense et aratro " of Marshall Bugeaud. The sword sufficed 
to assure their domination; to the vanquished — work. 
They have disappeared, except perhaps in the towns where 
they crossed with the Gallo-Roman middle class, after having 
preserved the forms of the imperial administration, for want 
of knowing and of being able to do better. The Arabs 
traversed the country but to disappear immediately. It 
results, once more let it be repeated, that the present dis- 
tribution of races should faithfully represent to us their an- 
cient distribution, except in places where special economic 
conditions have been slowly modified, but in a constant 
manner, by foreign influences. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE EVOLUTION OF THE CART] 

IT is a truism that the commonest objects, those that we 
see around us every day, usually fail to arouse any in- 
terest as to their significance or origin. One of the great 
benefits of travel is to awaken interest in even the most 
trivial matters of daily life, and this is usually accomplished 
through the diversity in their appearance from that which 
we are accustomed to see at home. 

/ We who live in Britain, for example, see (carts Jevery day, 
but do we ever wonder what has been their history ? We 
accept the finished product and there leave it, little thinking 
that in the sister isle there still persist strange survivals from 
the twilight of history which afford suggestive clues of the 
forgotten stages in the evolution of our common cart. 

In this case no distant travel is necessary ; there is no need 
to go to Asia or Africa, nor even to the remote parts of 
Europe. At our very door, so to speak, have we the links in 
the chain of evidence ; scarce one is missing. Probably such 
a sequence cannot be found in any other country in the 
world. 

The history of the cart is one chapter of a much greater 
study — that of transport. The civilisation of the world and 
the spread of culture are bound up with facility of transport, 
including in this term the means of conveyance and porter- 
age, and the routes traversed. 

128 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE CART 1 29 

Without doubt the most primitive means of transport was 
what an American anthropologist has termed " the human 
beast of burden." This has always been an important, but 
it tends to become a diminishing, factor, though it^can never 
be entirely replaced by other means. The absence of any 
other method of porterage is a sure sign of that low stage 
of culture which is termed savagery. Its extensive employ- 
ment in higher grades of culture is due to slavery. Slave 
raiders load their human chattels with objects of merchan- 
dise, to sell ultimately the whole caravan. (The great archi- 
tectural and engineering works of pagan antiquity were 
possible only through slave or forced labour^ It would 
appear from this that under certain conditions human 
labour is more economical than beast labour, but sooner or 
later man has been in most places largely replaced by the 
beast, and the beast is being replaced by the f reig ht train 
and other mechanical modes of transport. 

A professional carrier can carry continuously greater 
weight than an ordinary man ; and fifty, one hundred, two 
hundred pounds, and even greater weights are on record as 
usual weights for a day's journey. As soon as man learnt 
to domesticate animals he found that more could be carried 
upon their backs than upon his own. So the pack-animal 
marks the next stage of development. 

(jn some parts of the west of Ireland there are no good 
roads, and everything has to be carried by human beings, 
or on packs by horses and asses. Even where the roads are 
good, as in the islands of Inishbofin and Inishshark, off the 
coast of Galway, they may be used only for foot traffic, as 
there are no wheeled vehicles of any description, and all 
goods are carried either in hampers slung on a person's back 
(the usual method of taking home potatoes and peats), or in 
two wicker panniers or cleaves, slung across the back of a 
pony or donkey. 



130 THE STUDY OF MAN 

(With the building of good roads the primitive means of 
transport are being superseded by later methods ; but these 
new means of porterage are examples of the latest mechan- 
ical developments, the centuries of slow transition have 
been skipped, and light railways already, and auto-cars, 
may in the immediate future follow closely on the heels 
of the old-time human beast of burden and his dumb 
companions. 

(By and by it came to be discovered that an animal could 
draw considerably greater weights than it could carry. A 
porter who goes short distances and returns unloaded can 
carry 135 pounds seven miles a day, but the same man can 
carry in a wheelbarrow 150 pounds ten miles a day, that is, 
half as much again. 

When the red-skins of America shift camp they trail their 
tent-poles behind their horses, pack up all their goods and 
chattels in the skin tent, and tie the bundle on to the poles. 
They are then free to move wherever they choose. Even 
the dogs may be employed to carry smaller loads on trailing 
stakes. This is a natural device, but one wonders how these 
nomad hunters managed in the horseless pre-Columbian 
days. 

Captain Burt, in his celebrated Letters from a Gentleman 
in the North of Scotland to his Friend in London (1754), gives 
an illustration of a vehicle consisting of two poles drawn by 
a small, ill-kempt pony. The body of the cart is formed by 
two pieces of wood bent in a semi-circle, the ends of which 
are fastened to the shafts, the one close behind the pony 
and the other a little distance behind, and the arches are 
steadied at the top by a piece of wood running from the 
one to the other. Thin pieces of wood, osiers perhaps, 
pass at intervals across the floor and ends of this very primi- 
tive contrivance. 

Sir Arthur Mitchell found at Strathglass, Kintail, and 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE CART I3I 

elsewhere, in the years 1863 and 1864, carts in use without 
wheels exactly of the kind just described ; these are figured 
by Dr. Mitchell in his suggestive book, TJie Past in the 
Present. 

If this vehicle has died out in Wales it must have done so 
very recently ; at all events it is still in full use in certain 
parts of Ireland, notably in the Glens of Antrim. 

On looking at the illustrations it will be seen that the 
Irish slide-car is primitive enough. Two shafts are harnessed 




Fig. 22. 
Slide-Car, Inverness (1754) ; after Burt. 

on to a horse, and the ends which drag on the ground are shod 
with short runners or shoes; sometimes the runners lie their 
whole length on the ground, or more generally they are 
tilted up so as to have pretty much the same slant as the 
shafts (Plate III). These runners, which do not appear in 
the figures given by Sir Arthur Mitchell, are a useful addi- 
tion, as they save the lower ends of the shafts from wear 
and tear. The shafts are kept apart by cross-bars. In one 
car in Plate III., 2, three holes are seen in the last cross- 
bar, in which upright stakes can be inserted, as in the car in 
the background of Plate IV., Fig. i, to retain the corn or 
the whins (as furze is called in Ireland) from slipping down 
behind. The lashing of a wicker basker or creel on to the 
shafts is an obvious step in advance, and these are used to 



132 THE STUDY OF MAN 

bring down potatoes from the fields or turfs from the mount- 
ain. The straw harness in the lower figure of Plate III. is 
an interesting survival, and that, combined with the slide- 
car, carries us back to very primitive times. 

The modern Irish name for this wheelless cart is the same 
as the old Gaelic name, Carr Sliunain. Dr. Sullivan ' states 
that there is no reason to suppose that the Irish Carr is a 
loan-word from the Latin Carrus, the stem Car being prob- 
ably common to the Latin, the Germanic, and the Celtic 
languages. 

The Irish warrior of ancient times habitually carried a 
couple of spears, and a native poet, singing of the pursuit 
of a certain warrior, tells us that — 

'VThe track of his two spears through the marsh 
Was like the ruts of a car over weak grassy stubbles." 

The phrase " weak grassy stubbles " refers to the rich 
after-grass of soft meadows. "^ This is perhaps the first refer- 
ence to the slide-car. 

Dr. Mitchell strikes a note of warning that is, perhaps, 
not unneeded. 

'(when I saw," he says, " what these carts were employed in 
doing, namely, transporting peats, ferns, and hay from high 
grounds down very steep hills entirely without roads, I saw that 
the contrivance was admirably adapted for its purpose, and that 
wheeled carts would have been useless for that work. But I saw 
more than this ; I saw that these carts were used, doing the exact 
analogue of what is done every day in the advanced south. 
When boulders, for instance, are removed on sledges from the 
fields in which they have been turned up; when trees are trans- 
ported on sledges from the high grounds on which they have been 
cut; when a heavily laden lorry puts on the drag as it comes down- 

' W. K. Sullivan, Introduction to E. O'Curry, Manners and Customs of the 
Ancient Irish, 1873, i., p. cccclxxvi. ^ Loc. cit., p. ccccxliii. 



Plate III. 




h'lG. I, Slide-Car, County Antrim ; from a photograph by Welch. 



J'S^S 




Fig. 2. Slide-Car, County Antrim ; from a photograph l)y the Author. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE CART 1 33 

hill — what is it that we see but carts without wheels — carts with- 
out wheels preferred to carts with wheels, whenever the circum- 
stances in which they are to be used makes the want of the wheels 
an advantage. It is not always an evidence of capacity or skill 
to use elaborate or fine machinery. A rough, rude tool may for 
certain purposes be the most efficient, and may show wisdom both 
in its contriver and employer. It would certainly show a want 
of wisdom in the Kintail Highlanders, if they used wheeled carts 
to do the work they require of their wheelless carts. Indeed, 
they could not so use them, except by putting the drag on hard 
and fast — being first at the trouble of getting wheels, and then at 
the trouble of preventing them from turning." 

The sanae argument can be applied to Ireland. In a very 
hilly country half the time one is going up-hill and the 
other half down-hill; when going up-hill there is no load, 
and consequently the slide-car, being so very light, is prac- 
tically of no weight for a horse. Coming down-hill with a 
load a rigid vehicle has to be employed in any case, and so 
the slide-car is equally efficient, the chief drawback being 
that it can carry so little, but this is not of much account in 
small holdings. The slide-car has, further, the great recom- 
mendation of being made easily and cheaply without requir- 
ing the services of a skilled carpenter or wheelwright. It is 
also as easily repaired, and all the materials are ready to 
hand. 

fit is also interesting to note that these very primitive 
carts can be constructed entirely of wood and thongs, or 
ropes, and there is no necessity for any metal to be em- 
ployed. 

We now come to a gap in the evidence of the evolution- 
ary history of the cart that is not easy to fill. What was 
the precursor of the wheel ? There can be little doubt that 
the wheel was derived by slow modification of an antecedent 
object, and there is a strong presumption that this " missing 



134 THE STUDY OF MAN 

link " was a roller, but there does not appear to be any 
positive evidence to render this view absolutely certain. 

'The mechanical principle of the roller was known to re- 
mote antiquity, and it is generally accepted that the great 
stones of megalithic monuments, such as menhirs, crom- 
lechs, and the like, were transported in this manner, as we 
know were the great statues of Assyria and Egypt. 

It is not presupposing too much to surmise that a cylin- 
drical tree-trunk might be placed beneath the shafts of a 
slide-car, or of a sledge, in order to reduce the friction. A 
constructional problem arises from the difficulty of keeping 
it in position. This could be overcome in the former by 
placing a short roller between the shafts and fixing a pin in 
the centre of each end of the roller, which could then re- 
volve in a notch in the shafts, as in the accompanying 
diagram (Fig. 23), or between two pegs, as in the Portu- 
guese cart (Fig. 31). 

We must imagine a further development, which is also 
missing from Ireland, in the reduction of the central por- 
tion. This would become the practice as soon as man dis- 
covered that efficiency was increased by reducing the long 
frictional surface, and that the weight was lessened. 

(Herr Stephan, the late enlightened Postmaster-General 
of the German Empire, to whom we owe the introduction 
of the post-card, described, according to Poesche,* a very 
primitive cart that he saw in Portugal. A log is cut from 
the trunk of a large tree, the central portion is hacked away 
so as to leave a solid disc at each end joined by an axle. 
Poesche also mentions an ancient Egyptian battle scene, in 
which a large Aryan woman is depicted carrying off a 
wounded brother, husband, or son, on a waggon with similar 
wheels, drawn by oxen. 

This explanation of the origin of wheels has been adopted 

^ T. Poesche, Die Arier, 1S78, p. 98. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE CART 



135 



by various writers ' who have, however, regarded the sledge 
as the parent of the cart, as it was on sledges that the colossal 
statues of Egypt and the winged bulls of Assyria were rolled. 
Dr. E. Hahn, however, in his learned and suggestive essay, 
Demeter und Baubo, argues against this view. He thinks 




Fig. 23. 
Diagrams Illustrating a Probable Evolution of Wheels from a Roller. 

that in this case wheeled vehicles would have arisen wher- 
ever rollers have been employed ; but it is not so, the 
waggon arose only in the district from which agriculture 
originally spread. He believes that the waggon was primi- 
tively a holy implement consecrated to the great goddess of 
agriculture and fertility, and that it only subsequently be- 
came a secular farm implement. 

Dr. Hahn definitely states as his belief that the waggon 
has arisen because the wheel existed. The wheel in its 

' Reuleaux, Theoretische Kinematik, Braunschweig, 1875, p. 204 ; Kine- 
m a tics of Mack inery. 

E. B. Tylor, "On the Origin of the Plough and Wheel-carriage," Jotirn. 
Anth. hist., X., 1880, p. 74. 



136 THE STUDY OF MAN 

most simple form is only a disc pierced through the centre. 
Such discs of stone, clay, etc., occurred in the same culture 
district as that in which agriculture arose, and was at the 
same time an implement and a religious object. This is the 
spinning whorl, and the sacred symbols, such as the svas- 
tika, on numerous whorls from Hissarlik, suggest that they 
were often used as votive offerings. As spinning was an 
occupation of the women, these whorls were probably dedi- 
cated to a female divinity, presumably to the goddess of 
Nature and generation. 

It is only necessary to stick two or four of these whorls 
on one or two pieces of stick, and to fasten something over 
the axis, and a waggon would result. That these whorls 
are not large explains also the small size of many holy wag- 
gons. Later, following this model, large waggons were 
made, and these holy waggons were drawn by the sacred 
animal of the great goddess, the ox, and conveyed the image 
of the goddess. 

There is no need to follow Dr. Hahn ' in his disquisition 
on the curious wheeled objects of the Bronze Age, which 
were probably votive offerings, or at all events were re- 
ligious symbols. His idea is that the small objects were 
symbols of the large real waggon in which rode the god or 
goddess, or the image of the deity. 

Most students of ceremonial institutions will probably 
demur to Halm's position. In the first place, there is no 
reason to believe that agriculture was discovered only in 
some area of Eurasia, and that the art thence spread over 
the greater part of the habitable world. Then the evolu- 
tion of spindle-whorls into cart-wheels scarcely appears 
probable. It seems more in consonance with what we 
know of the history of sacred institutions and implements, 

' E. Yiz\\\-\, Demeter unci Baubo, Versuch einer Theorie der Entste hung un seres 
Ackerbaus, 1896, Liibeck. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE CART 1 37 

that the waggon had an industrial origin, and it may well 
be that it arose in close connection with agriculture; the 
operations of agriculture have always been closely connected 
with religion, and there is no reason to deny that the agri- 
cultural cart at its inception may have been associated with 
the cult of agriculture. The small size of the votive offer- 
ings or wheeled symbols is no matter for surprise. On the 
whole, then, we may accept the older view of the origin of 
wheels as being the more probable alternative. 

Dr. Hahn points out that he is dealing solely with the 
four-wheeled ox-waggon which was used for religious pur- 
poses. Later, two-wheeled horse-chariots were invented, 
and were used from India to Britain and North Africa. He 
adduces the authority of old Johann Scheffer, who published 
a book entitled De re vehiculari, in 1671, for the opinion 
that, contrary to what one would expect, the four-wheeled 
ox-waggon was the first vehicle ; then the taming of horses 
led to 'the two-wheeled chariots or carts, and finally the 
horses were ridden. 

The earliest history of the cart will perhaps always remain 
in obscurity ; it is indeed probable that it arose independ- 
ently in more than one area. The ancestral slide-car may 
have been one source, and it is by no means unlikely that a 
framework on rollers, which was used for moving large 
masses of stone, or even the common sledge, may also have 
given rise to a four-wheeled waggon. 

We must now return from this long digression to a con- 
sideration of certain wheeled vehicles that are still in use, 
or, till recently, were employed in the British Islands. The 
wheels, however, are of small diameter, and are solid instead 
of having spokes. 

In Captain Burt's famous Letters,^ we find illustrations of 

^ Burt, Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland to his Friend in 
London, 1754. 



138 THE STUDY OF MAN 

two kinds of block-wheel cart that were in use in Inverness 
about 1730. Both of them are simple modifications of the 
slide-car, which, as we have already seen, was in contempo- 
rary use with them, with the addition of wheels. Concern- 
ing the latter we read : 

" THE Wheels, when new, are about a Foot and half high, 
but are soon worn very small: They are made of three pieces of 
Plank, pinned together at the Edges like the Head of a Butter 
Firken, and the Axletree goes round with the Wheel, which having 
some Part of the Circumference with the Grain, and other Parts 
not, it wears unequally, and in a little Time is rather angular 
than round, which causes a disagreeable Noise, as it moves upon 
the Stones." 

One of these carts appears to be nothing more than a 
wheeled slide-car, if the term be allowed, in which a found 
wicker basket is jammed between the shafts just behind the 
pony. 

The other consists of an open framework, the base of 
which is formed by the two shafts; and, as a consequence, 
the basket-like body of the cart is tilted up at the same 
angle as the latter. This is ** that species wherein they 
carry their Peats." ^ 

A very similar cart to the last is engraved on the map 
illustrating Twiss's ^ Tour in Ireland in IJJS > but in this 
there is no front to the cart, and the side rails decrease in 
size from behind forwards, and cease by the flanks of the 
horse, so that when the cart is being drawn the tops of the 
rails are approximately horizontal. An illustration (Fig. 
25) of the same cart is given by Croker.^ 

' These are called kellachies ; for another account of these and other primitive 
carts, see G. L. Gomme, The Village Community, i8go, pp. 278, 286. Isaac 
Taylor, The Origin of the Aryans, 1890, p. 179, may also be consulted. 

^ T. Crofton Croker, Researches in the South of Ireland. 1824. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE CART 



139 



In an engraving by James Malton, published in 1791, of 
the College Green, Dublin/ we find an illustration of a cart 
which consists of two shafts which rest on pivots jutting out 





Fig. 24. 
Two Block- Wheel Carts, Inverness (1754); after Burt. 

from the centre of two solid wooden wheels, which are 
connected by a thick quadrangular axle-tree. In this cart 
the wheels and the axle are solidly joined together, and 
revolve as one piece. The only difference between the 
wheels of this cart and those of our second " missing link," 
as it may be termed, is that in the latter they are made out 
of a single tree-trunk, as in the Portuguese cart, whereas in 
the former they are built up of several pieces of wood. 
Owing to the small size of the wheels the shafts are inclined 
at a great angle, and in order to get it level, the platform of 

' Malton and Cowen, A Picturesque and Descriptive View of the City of 
Dublin in ijgi. 



140 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



the cart has to be propped up behind by a couple of stakes; 
or, to put it in other words, boards are laid across the side 
rails of such a cart as that figured in the Tour in Ireland. 

There are contemporary engravings of other carts pub- 
lished towards the end of last century, which represent very 
similar carts — in counties Dublin and Wicklow, for example 
— ^but in which the wheels are outside of the shafts; as no 
linch-pin is drawn we must assume that in these too the axle 
revolved along with the wheels. 

These carts are described in the following manner by 
Twiss in his anonymously published book, A Tour in Ire- 
land in lyjs ' 




Fig. 25. 
Irish Low-Back Car (1824) ; after Croker. 

* '(Goods are conveyed about the city on small two-wheeled 
cars, drawn by a single horse; the wheels are thin round blocks, 
each about twenty inches in diameter. The wheels of those cars 
which are used in the country are placed at a greater distance 
from each other than those of city cars." 

Quite similar cars may still be seen in use in the north of 



Plate IV. 




Fig. I. Block- Wheel Car, Glenshesk ; from a photograph by Welch. 




Fig. 2. Block-Wheel Car, Carrickfergus ; from a photograph by Welch. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE CART I4I 

Ireland, from County Donegal to County Down. The 
wheels may be within the shafts and with a revolving axle ; 
now, however, the latter is usually quite slender; or the 
wheels may be outside the shafts and with a linch-pin, show- 
ing that the axle is fixed and that the wheels alone revolve. 
Planks may be movably attached to the edges of the plat- 
form, or the sides may be permanently fastened, and so a 
cart, as opposed to what is more correctly termed a float or 
a lorry, is evolved. 

The North Irish peasant farmer, when he wishes to crush 
the clods of earth on his dry fields, will lift the cart with 
its shafts off the wheels, and replace them on a wooden roll- 
er, resembling the sketch on page 135, and to increase its 
effectiveness he puts stones into the cart. The cart, save 
for its platform, thus reverts to the stage of the first 
** missing link." 

" In Borrowdale it is on record that wheeled vehicles did not 
make their appearance till about 1770; and when these novelties 
did reach the lakes, they were clumsy and awkward in character. 
Clog-wheels were the first type used on farm carts, and there are 
still old men of between eighty and ninety years, who can re- 
member them in use. The wheels are clumsy discs of wood, 
joined by a great beam or axle, which is firmly fastened to them. 
The wheels are i ft. lo^^ ins. in diameter, and 3 ins. wide in 
the tyre, where the iron bands or * strakes ' are formed by three 
pieces nailed to the wood. The distance between the wheels is 
3 ft. 2 ins." ^ 

But the cart is, so to speak, only half fledged ; it moves 
along slowly and heavily on its small, solid wheels. 

The evolution of the spoke-wheel was probably a slow 
affair, and its stages are missing from Ireland, so we must 
turn elsewhere for evidence. 

' H. Swainson Cowper, "Some Old-Fashioned Contrivances in Lakeland," 
The Reliquary and Illustrated Archceologist, iv., 189S, p. 20. 



142 THE STUDY OF MAN 

The employment of spoke-wheels is, however, of great 
antiquity. Messrs. Perrot and Chipiez note that : 

"'Not one of the Assyrian military pictures can be named in 
which war chariots do not appear, and they are by no means the 
heavy and clumsy cars now used in some parts both of European 
and Asiatic Turkey. Their wheels are far from being those solid 
discs of timber that are alone capable of resisting the inequali- 
ties of a roadless country. They have not the lightness of a 
modern carriage, with its tires of beaten steel, but the felloes of 
their wheels are light and graceful enough to prove that the roads 
of those times were better than anything the Mesopotamia of to- 
day can show. The spokes, which seem to have been fitted with 
great care and nicety, are, as a rule, eight in number." ^ 

The chariot probably came into Egypt with the horse 
about the time of the Oriental pastoral kings (2098-1587 
B.C.), and it came as a fully developed vehicle. 

In the early Cyprian tombs clay models of chariots have 
been found ; these are modelled with solid wheels, but some- 
times spokes are painted on the clay; other models, though 
decorated with structural details, are almost certainly in- 
tended to represent vehicles with block-wheels. On the 
sarcophagi and on some vases the chariots have spokes. 
Messrs. Perrot and Chipiez,'^ while admitting that all war 
chariots had a strong family likeness to each other, deny that 
the artist borrowed from Assyrian sources, and state their 
belief that he went no farther than his native city; " even 
the wheel-spokes are different; they are more solid and 
heavy in the Cypriot example, the wheelwright who made 
them has less skill than his Mesopotamian rival." 

To come nearer home, a beautiful bronze bucket was dis- 

' G. Perrot and C. Chipiez, A History of Art in Chaldea and Assyria, ii,, 

p. 75. 

"^ A History of Art in Phoenicia and Cyprus^ i., p. 209; ii., pp. 181, 310, 
et seq. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE CART 



143 



covered in 1891 on the banks of the Danube/ about thirty- 
seven miles to the east of Vienna. It belonged to the 
period of transition between those of Hallstadt and La 
Tene, that is to say, about the commencement of the fourth 
century B.C., or at the time when iron 'was replacing bronze 
for cutting implements in that part of Europe. Amongst 
other subjects a chariot race is engraved on this bucket, or 
situla. The wheels of the chariots are either block-wheels with 
four nearly circular perforations, or spoke-wheels with four 
very broad spokes ; this was evidently the character of the 




P^IG. 26. 
Celtic Chariot, from the Gottweiger Situla ; after Szombathy. 

wheels of the war chariots of the Celts ; we may assume that 
those of their waggons were of yet ruder construction. 

The Roman evidence has been conveniently summarised 
by J. Yates and G. E. Marindin in their article on the 
Plaiistrtim.'^ The body consisted of a platform, with or 
without sides ; these were upright boards or open-work rails, 
or a large wicker basket was fastened on the platform. The 
wheels ordinarily had no spokes,' but were solid, of the kind 
called tympana, or " drums," nearly a foot in thickness, and 

' J. Szombathy, " Die Gottweiger Situla," Correspondenz-Blatt Deutsch Anth. 
Gesell, xxiii., i8g2, p. 9. 

^A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities^ edited by W. Smith, 
W. Wayte, and G. E. Marindin, 1891. The plaustrum was a heavy two- 
wheeled cart ; the four-wheeled was the plaustrum Diajus, 

^ Non sunt radiatcE, Prob. ad Verg. Georg., i., 165. 



144 THE STUDY OF MAN 

made either by sawing them whole from the trunk of a tree 
or by naiHng together boards. These wheels were fastened 
to the axle, which revolved within wooden rings attached to 
the under side of the platform. Although these wheels were 
excellent for the preservation of the roads, they turned with 
a long circuit, and advanced slowly and with a creaking 
sound. ^ They were usually drawn by oxen, but sometimes 
by mules. The Greek ocfxa^a corresponded both to the 
plaustrum and the plaustrum 7najus ; ** the four-wheeled 
wain " is mentioned in the Odyssey, ix., 241, and Herodotus , 
i., 188. 

Professor Tylor figures an ox-waggon that is carved on 
the Antonine Column ; it appears to have solid wheels, 
and the square end of the axle proves that it and its 
drum-wheels turned round together. He points out that 
the ancient Roman farm-carts were mostly made with 
wheels built up of several pieces of wood nailed together, 
" as are their successors which are used to this day with 
wonderfully little change, as in Greece and Portugal." The 
bullock-cart of the Azores "^ is a striking relic from the classic 
world ; ** its wheels are studded with huge iron nails by way 
of tire." ^ Although the block-wheel was still in use in the 




Fig. 27. 
Agricultural Scene on a Vase in the Campana Collection, Louvre ; after Duruy. 

Italy of the Roman Empire, spoke-wheels were also em- 
ployed even for agricultural vehicles, but I have been unable 
to gather any Italian evidence of the transition stages. 

^ Stridentia plaustra, Verg. Georg., iii., 536. 

^ Bullar, Winter in the Azores, i., p. 121 ; cf. Tylor, loc. cit., fig. 12, p. 80. 
^ E. B. Tylor, " On the Origin of the Plough and Wheel-Carriage," Journ. 
Anth. hist., X., 1880, p. 80. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE CART 



145 



My friend, Mr. J. L. Myers, of Christchurch, Oxford, 
has very kindly given me several references to early Greek 
chariot wheels which have supplied links in the evolution of 
spokes that I was in search of. The block-wheel is shown 
in A, Fig. 30. This is evidently a built-up wheel, but there 
is no rim or felloe to it. 

Wheels with three spokes, evidently derived from this, 
are figured by Duruy from various sources.' The spirited 
little agricultural scene (Fig. 27), depicted on a vase in the 
Campana collection in the Louvre, gives a clue to the struc- 
ture of the wheel, which is seen on a larger scale on another 
vase (Fig. 28), copied by Duruy from Gerhard.'' The wheel 




Fig. 28. 
Ancient Greek Carriage on a Vase ; after Duruy, from Gerhard. 

(B, Fig. 30) figured by Harrison and Verrall ' from an 
archaic Greek plate in the British Museum of the sixth 
century B.C., which also consists of three spokes, is another 
example of the same type of wheel. A variety with two 

' V. Duruy, Histoire des Grecs, 1887, i., pp. 251, 373, 732. 
'^ Auserlesene Vasenbilder, Taf. ccxvii. 

^ Jane Harrison and Margaret Verrall, Mythology and Monuments 0/ Ancient 
Athens, i8go, p. 289, fig. 30. 



146 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



of the spokes slightly curved is admirably rendered on an 
Etruscan silver coin in the British Museum ' (C, Fig. 30), 
the date of which may be about the middle of the fifth 
century, or earlier. A wheel of this description was found 
by Gastaldi * in the turbary of Mercurago, near Arona in 
North Italy; " it is a wheel of elegant form, in which there 
is not the slightest trace of any metal." The figure given 
by Gastaldi (on page 112 of his book) proves that these 
wheels could be made most skilfully in the Bronze Age. 

The four-spoked wheel is characteristic of Greek vehicles, 
and may be seen on innumerable coins and vases. It was in 
use in the Mykenaean Period. A war-chariot of the heroic 




Fig. 29. 
Mykenaean War Chariot of the Heroic Age on the Fran9ois Vase ; after Duruy. 

age is painted upon the Frangois vase (Fig. 29) ^ with this 
kind of wheel ; in order to give greater support to the felloe, 
the spokes either splay out or are clamped by triangular 

^ B. V. Head, A Guide to the Principal Gold and Silver Coins of the Ancients^ 
from circ. B.C. 700 to A.D. I, British Museum, 3rd ed., 1889, pi. xv., fig. i. 

^ B. Gastaldi, Lake Habitations and Pre-historic Remains in the Turbaries 
and Marl-Beds of Northern and Central Italy, London, 1865. 

^ From Duruy, loc. cit., p. 155, after Monum. delV Instit. archeol. IV. tav. liv., 
Iv. ; and W, Helbig, Das homerische Epos aus den Denkm. erldut., fig. 18, p. 

lOI. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE CART 



H7 



blocks. An interesting feature in this wheel is the indica- 
tion of lashing at the junction of the spokes with the hub; 
it looks as if these were fastened together by means of 
leather thongs. It is impossible to say whether in this in- 
stance actual lashing is intended, or whether the wheels 
were decorated with a pattern which had its origin in an 
antecedent method of fastening; examples of the latter will 
be found in my little book, Evolution in Art. A method 
of supporting and strengthening the rim, analogous to the 
last device, is found on an Euboian coin of the early part of 
the sixth century B.C., * but in this case (D, Fig. 30) small 
struts are employed. 




Fig. 30. 
A Series of Early Greek Chariot Wheels from Various Sources. 



The shape of the spokes of Greek wheels and the method 
of their insertion into their respective felloes vary consider- 
ably; in E, Fig. 30, will be found four variants; of these 
No. I is from a coin of Tarentum."; No. 2 is from a car of 
Triptolemus, on a vase, in which again there is a chevron 
ornament on the spokes at their insertion in the hub which 
is suggestive of tying. ^ Nos. 3 and 4 are common forms, 

^ Brit. Mus. Guide ^ pi. 5, fig. 21. 
2/^eV.,pl. 7. fig. 5. 

^ Duruy, loc. cit., i., p. 53 ; see also Harrison and Verrall, loc. cit., p. cix., 
fig. 22 ; p. cxxxix., fig. 36. 



148 THE STUDY OF MAN 

especially the latter. An odd variant ' (F, Fig. 30) may 
represent a twinned four-spoked wheel ; it occurs on a 
tetradrachm of Syracuse of about 500 B.C. 

Mr. Myres informs me that Mykenaean and Dipylon cars 
regularly have plain four-spoked wheels^ ; and this is normal 
till Roman times. Six spokes occur in the seventh to the 
sixth centuries, however,^ and later, as on a coin of Chalkis^ 
of the third to the second century B.C. ; but most of the 
apparently six-spoked wheels are perspective views of four- 
spoked wheels, in which the axle is shown, and also the 
projecting hub. Eight spokes occur as early as the seventh 
century (probably), in an Oriental car on a Cyprian vase,^ 
and in the sixth century at Klazomenae, on a painted sar- 
cophagus.' But they are not common till much later, as, 
for example, on an Athenian coin ^ of the third to the 
second century B.C. 

After I had written the foregoing I came across a most in- 
teresting paper, by Professor de Aranzadi, on " The Groan- 
ing and other Waggons of Spain," * which supplies very 
valuable evidence as to the real nature of these early wheels. 
The built-up solid wheel of ancient Greece (Fig. 30, A) finds 
its exact counterpart among the Basques of to-day (Fig. 31). 
The planks of which the wheel is made are kept together by 
a transverse plano-convex bar, on the inner side, and by two 
annular iron bands, which are fastened at the periphery, on 

^ Brit. Mus. Guide, pi. g, fig. 34, 

'^ E.g., Brunn, Gr. Kunst-geschichte, i., figs. 97, lOO. 

^E.g., on a Melian vase, Conze, Melische Thongefasse, and Brunn, Gr. 
Kunst-geschichte, i., p. 109. 

* Brit. Mus. Guide, p. 43, fig. 32. 

^ Brunn, Gr. Kunst-geschichte, i., fig. 96. 

^ Ibid., loc. cit., fig. 135. 

'^ Brit. Mus. Guide, pi. 65, fig. 14. 

*• Telesforo de Aranzadi, " Der achzende Wagen und Andres aus Spanien," 
Archiv. fur Anthropologic, xxiv., 1896, p. 215. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE CART 



149 



the inside and outside of the wheel; but a still simpler kind 
of wheel (Fig. 31,6) also occurs. The intermediate stage 
(Fig. 30, C) is still in use in Spain ; Aranzadi calls it the 
Cantabrian-Asturian wheel. In this the felloe is formed of 
six pieces of wood, two of the primary planks remain, and 
the cross-bar is now biconvex in section. The two peripheral 
iron bands are also present. In one form from Cangas de 
Tineo, the two planks fill up the angles which the cross-bar 
makes wdth the felloe, and the cross-bar forms the only 
spoke. 




Fig. 31. 

Various Spanish Wheels ; after Telesforo de Aranzadi. 

1. The outer side of a Basque wheel. 2. The inner side of the same wheel. 3. The 
Cantabrian-Asturian wheel. 4. Portuguese wheel. 5. Portuguese cart. 6. Wheel 
from Larrasoana. 



In Portugal, wheels are made out of a single piece of wood 
(Fig. 31, 4), in which two elliptical holes are cut; the wheel 
is strengthened by bands of iron. An analogous wheel, 
built up of three boards, occurs in Galicia. The latter type 
is found in the ox-carts of the Canary Islands and among 
the Zuni Indians of New Mexico, to which places it was 



150 THE STUDY OF MAN 

brought by the Spaniards. I have been informed that in 
Mexico, where this kind of wheel is also found, it is some- 
times made without any metal parts. A perfectly similar 
wheel is figured by Gastaldi ' ; it was made of three pieces 
of walnut wood ; these were clamped by two curved pieces 
of larch wood, which were let into the wheel; the latter had 
two semi-circular perforations on each side of the axle. The 
wheel belonged to the Bronze Age of Northern Italy, and 
was found in a bog at Mercurago, near Arona. 

It is tempting to regard such perforated block-wheels as 
representing the precursors of spoke-wheels. If in a solid 
wheel, with four perforations, it was found that the holes 
could be enlarged without seriously weakening the contriv- 
ance, a wheel with four broad spokes would result ; and it 
might be discovered that it was better to make spokes in- 
tentionally than to leave them as supports between holes. 

I do not, however, think that this was the actual process 
of evolution. Most probably the wheel was composed 
originally of a single piece of wood, later it may have been 
constructed of boards (Fig. 31, e) which were variously 
strengthened. Yet later it was discovered that it was not 
necessary to make the wheel solid, and various expedients, 
some of which have been noted above, were devised to 
lighten the wheel and yet retain its strength. 

Groaning through Spain, as if still in the pangs of their 
labour, do we find these various forms of cumbersome 
wheels, essentially the same as they creaked three millen- 
niums ago in ancient Greece.^ 

The ** groaning cart," or, as the Spaniards poetically 
term it, the " singing cart," Carro que canta, may still be 
heard in the picturesque parts of Cantabrian and Atlantic 

^ B. Gastaldi, loc. cit., p. iii. 

' Block-wheels, which may be mere discs of wood, sometimes perforated with 
lioles, occur in China, Korea, and other parts of Asia. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE CART 151 

coasts; but it is probably doomed to disappear, as carts of 
the same shape, but with an iron hub in the wheels, with 
felloes, with the axle fastened to the floor of the vehicle, 
and which do not squeak, are silently but surely replacing 
them. The friction of the axle against the wedges in the 
floor of the waggon which keep it in its place, produces the 
squeaking or jarring sound which from time to time sounds 
like a tune or its octave; this is useful as a warning to pre- 
vent two carts from meeting in a narrow street, and also 
serves for the recognition of an approaching waggon. In 
the towns the creaking of carts is forbidden, so the drivers 
grease the axles with tallow, soap, or bacon, but as soon as 
they have passed the last house of the town they remove 
the tallow and put resin and water on the axle to make it 
groan again, so great is the pleasure they take in it. In Ga- 
licia there is a folk-song, which runs as follows: 

" When thou wilt that the waggon sings, 
Moisten the axle in the river, 
For, if thoroughly wetted, 
It sings like a pipe." 

When these carts are driven on natural roads, which have 
been made by repeated use, even the steepest hills are not 
avoided. They are used for all kinds of field work, for 
carrying manure, or bringing in the harvest, and also they 
are very important at weddings for carrying the bride's 
dowry to the house of the bridegroom. 

Professor de Aranzadi gives various details which are im- 
portant for those who would go into further details of the 
construction of primitive carts. Dr. Gadow ' devotes a 
chapter to " Ox-carts and different modes of yoking" in 
his book on Spain ; he gives five excellent figures of carts, 

^ Hans Gadow, In N^orthern Spain, London, 1897, pp. 272-280. 



152 THE STUDY OF MAN 

and graphically describes ".the most awful squeaking, 
squealing, creaking, croaking, howling noised," He states, 
the natives " either say that the oxen like the music, or 
that the noise drives away thefdeviP." 

We have already seen that in yet earlier times than those 
of Rome and Greece the spoke-wheeled war-chariots bore the 
Assyrian warriors on their paths of conquest, so soon did 
the early and rapidly perfected wheel of the war-chariot out- 
strip the backward wheel of the ** slow lumbering wains of 
the Eleusinian mother." ^ 

As Professor Tylor truly observes: 

" In looking at these clumsy vehicles we certainly seem to have 
primitive forms before us. There is, however, the counter- 
argument which ought not to be overlooked, and which in some 
measure accounts for the lasting-on of these rude carts, namely, 
that for heavy carting across rough ground they are convenient as 
well as cheap and easily repaired. Considering that the railway- 
carriage builder gives up the coach-wheel principle and returns 
to the primitive construction of the pair of wheels fixed to the 
axle turning in bearings, we see that our ordinary carriage-wheels 
turning independently on their axles, are best suited to com- 
paratively narrow wheels and to smooth ground or made roads. 
Here they give greater lightness and speed, and especially have 
the advantage of easily changing direction and turning, which in 
the old block-wheel cart can only be done by gradually slewing 
round in a wide circuit. ' ' 

We must now return to Ireland. 

It is impossible to say how long ago spoke-wheels were 
introduced there; we may, however, feel pretty certain that 
it was during the Bronze Age, and we may also assume that 
they probably accompanied the war-chariot. 

We know that three great branches of the Celtic stock, 
the Gauls, the British, and the Irish, used war-chariots. 

' Vergil, Georgics, i., 163. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE CART 1 53 

With regard to the first two, we have (as O'Beirne Crowe ' 
points out) authentic evidence of the fact in contemporary 
Roman writers, and as to the latter, the ever-faithful and 
very ancient Irish documents are equally clear on this point. 

In the feast of Bricriu, Loegaire Buadach's horses and 
chariot are thus described by Find-abair (Bright-beam) ^ to 
her mother, Medb, queen of the Connachta: 

** I see, indeed," says Find-abair, " the two horses which are 
under the chariot — two horses ardent, speckled grey: of like 
colour, of like form, of like goodness, of like victory. 
A wood-band, withe-y chariot. Two black, adjusted wheels: 
two beautiful entwining reins: steel, sword-straight shafts: a 
splendid body of strong joinings. A ridgy, strong-bright yoke." 

The same lady describes Conall Cernach's chariot thus: 

" A wood-band, withe-y chariot. Two bright, brazen wheels: 
a bright pole of much-silver: a very high, noisy body. A ridgy, 
strong-proud yoke: two wreath-y, strong-yellow reins." 

Again, after describing the horses, as before, Find-abair 
describes the chariot of the hero Cu Chulaind thus: 

" A withe-band chariot of witheing. Two very yellow, iron 
wheels: a pole with a witheing oi findi-uine. A tin body of slope- 
joinings. A ridgy, strong-golden yoke: two wreath-y, strong- 
yellow reins." 

From these and other descriptions it is evident that the 
body {cret, our " crate ") of the chariot was always of wood, 
that is, well-wrought wicker-work on a strong timber frame. 
In our third quotation the body is said to be made of ^tin^; 
elsewhere it is described as " a very high, noisy body, and 

^ J. O'Beirne Crowe, " Siabur-Charpat Con Culaind," Journ. Roy. Hist, 
and Arch. Assoc, Ireland {Kilkenny Arch. Soc), vol. i. (4th ser.), 1870, 
p. 413. "The Irish Chariot." 

2 Sullivan translates this name " Fair-browed " {loc. cit., cccclxxxi). 



154 THE STUDY OF MAN 

it of. tin, of slope-joininglets. " Now, decorating chariots 
with tin was a favourite practice among the ancient Celts. 
Thus PHny (lib. xxxiv., cap. 17) says that the Gauls were in 
the habit of adorning their vehicles with tin. Behind the 
chariot were, according to O'Beirne Crowe, two removable 
shafts, for in the Book of Leinster we read: ** Let the shaft 
of my carriage be reached me, that I may try the ford be- 
fore the horses." In front was the pole, most probably of 
wood, and overlaid with silver; but still we are told several 
times it was made of silver, one version being, " a bright 
pole of bright-silver, with a witheing oi find-ruined To 
this a single yoke for the two horses was attached. It had 
two wheels only, sometimes all of iron or bronze ; when of 
wood, which we presume to have been the case where the 
material is not specified, these wheels always had an iron 
tire. There is reason to believe that the Celtic chariot- 
wheel was relatively very small. 

In the Sculptured Stones of Scotland, ii. (1867), p. Ivi. 
(Spalding Club), Stuart makes the following statement: 

"(Occasionally fragments of chariots have been found in British 
sepulchres. About 1815, a barrow, near Market-Weighton, in 
Yorkshire, was opened, in which was a cist containing the skele- 
ton of a man. . . . On each side had been placed a chariot- 
wheel, of which the iron tire and ornaments of the nave have 
alone remained. The wheels had been about two feet eleven 
inches in diameter." 

In a neighbouring tumulus the wheels were about two 
feet eight inches in diameter. 

Dr. Sullivan says * the wheels were made of bronze or of 
iron ; the former was the older material, and seems to have 
been only traditionally remembered when the principal 

' W. K. Sullivan and E. O'Curry, On the Manners and Customs of the 
Ancient Irish^ vol, i., Introductioji, pp. cccclxxv-cccclxxxiii. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE CART I 55 

tales took their present form, the material then in general 
use being iron. The chariot-wheel was not a mere disc, 
but had spokes. He knew of only one passage from which 
the number of spokes can be inferred. The passage in ques- 
tion is the description of Cu Chulaind's chariot in the very 
ancient Irish manuscript, Siabiir CJiarpat Coitclmlaind : 
The Phantom Chariot of Cuchulaind." 

'VA stately Brog after that pair [of horses]; 
two firm black wheels; 
two symmetrical five-spoked wheels." 

The chariots (carpats) in the foregoing account appear to 
have been the ordinary war-chariots, as well as the vehicles 
which were used for travelling. Cu Chulaind and other 
warriors had, however, as Sullivan points out, a special war- 
chariot, the Cath Carpat serda^ or scythed battle-chariot. 
O'Beirne Crowe translates it the serrated war-chariot, " be- 
cause when fully furnished, every part of it available for 
attack or defence being closely spiked, presented the edge- 
appearance of a saw (Irish serr, Latin serrd).'' 

These warriors of the heroic age, whether of Erin or 
Greece it matters not, took a laudable pride in their war ac- 
coutrements, and not least in the decoration of their chariots. 
These descriptions from Irish sagas recall to mind one from 
the great Greek saga : 

x^So Hera, the goddess queen, daughter of great Kronos, went 
her way to harness the gold-frontletted steeds; and Hebe quickly 
put to the car the curved wheels of bronze, eight-spoked, upon 
their axle-tree of iron. Golden is their felloe, imperishable, and 
tires of bronze are fitted thereover, a marvel to look upon; and 
the naves are of silver, to turn about on either side. And the 
car is plaited tight with gold and silver thongs, and two rails run 
round about it. And the silver pole stood out therefrom; upon 



156 THE STUDY OF MAN 

the end bound she the fair golden yoke, and set thereon the 
fair breaststraps of gold, and Hera led beneath the yoke the 
horses fleet of foot, and hungered for strife and the battle-cry." 
— Iliad J V. 730. 

From gods and demi-gods we must descend to mortals, 
and from the inspiring times when the world was young we 
must pass to the fin-de-siecle. 

Mr. Hamilton ' states that in 1823, in the Brown Hall 
estate, in Donegal, 

2S" carts they had none ; most of the carrying was done in creels 
on ponies' backs. Some superior farmers had what were called 
low-backed cars — a sort of platform with shafts, and under it a 
pair of solid block-wheels. One rich man had spoke-wheels, 
which were greatly admired. . . . Crowds came to see the 
first cart that was turned out ; but though it was voted ' illegant* 
it was declared useless. ' For,' said a sage among the spectators, 
' who ever heard of a cart in this country ? ' And his argument 
seemed to weigh much with his auditors. However, in a few 
years later the Scotchmen had at one time orders on hand for 
fifty carts." 

(Spoke-wheel vehicles jostled block-wheel cars a century 
ago in Dublin, as they still do in parts of Ulster. The 
country carts with solid wheels are laggards from the early 
Bronze Age — possibly from Neolithic times; the spoke- 
wheel carts are perhaps the modified descendants of the 
war-chariot which the Gaelic-speaking Celts introduced into 
the British Islands. We have here, in the evolution of the 
wheel, another example of the stimulus to invention and im- 
provement that war gives to technology, which improve- 
ments may be later introduced into the peaceful avocations 
of life. 

Further investigations must decide whether the excentric 

' J. Hamilton, Sixty Years Experience as an Irish Landlord, 1894, p. 47. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE CART 



157 



Spokes of the modern Basque and ancient Greek wheels were 
characteristic of the vehicles of the agricultural Mediter- 
ranean race, and whether the radiating spoke-wheels were 
invented, or introduced into Europe, by the mobile Aryan 
peoples. 




Fig. 32. 
Two Carts at Dundonald, County Down ; from Photographs. 

A most interesting series of spoke-wheels can be seen, for 
example, at Dundonald, near Belfast, in County Down. 
The cart itself is of the same type as that associated with 
block-wheels ; but there are two varieties of spoke-wheels. 
In that both the wheels are small — scarcely larger than the 
solid wheels; but in the one case they are placed within the 
shafts, and in the other case outside of them. Thus we get 



158 THE STUDY OF MAN 

the same two varieties that we find among the block-wheel 
cars. It is obvious that in the first variety the wheel must 
be kept small, otherwise there would not be room enough 
for it beneath the floor of the cart ; but this necessary limit- 
ation does not obtain for the second variety. Here the 
conditioning factor appears to be a blind adherence to tradi- 
tional methods, for the people are accustomed to the old 
style of cart, with its familiar small wheels. 

We have seen that it is more convenient to make block- 
wheels of small size, and this necessitates a considerable 
slant in the shafts, which has to be rectified by propping up 
the hinder part of the floor of the cart. If this particular 
form of cart is persisted in, the wheels must be kept small, 
even when they are outside of the shafts, or else they would 
make the floor of the cart slope downwards in front. 

I have a photograph of another cart which shows two in- 
teresting features : first, a slight reduction in the upright 
back-staves; and second, the shafts proper are added on to 
the lower framework of the cart, and are placed at such an 
angle to it that they approximate to the horizontal position 
of ordinary shafts. 

From this last it is but a small step so to increase the 
diameter of the wheel that the shafts can lie in a horizontal 
position, and thus form the foundation of the floor of the 
cart. This is the present condition of the ordinary cart. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE ORIGIN OF THE IRISH JAUNTING-CAR 

IN the last chapter we studied a series of primitive vehicles 
which are either in use at the present day in Ireland, or 
which, comparatively recently, were employed in various 
parts of the British Islands. We have now to investigate 
the origin of a conveyance which is absolutely confined to 
Ireland, a true insular variety of carriage. 

There is very good evidence that the jaunting-car was 
evolved at the end of the last century, or more probably 
within the first few years of this century. It is therefore by 
no means an ancient vehicle, and, unlike many other im- 
plements, it has no long ancestry of progressive improve- 
ments from an early type, but, once started, it rapidly passed 
through its developmental history. 

We have not far to seek for the parental form ; in fact, 
we have already made its acquaintance as a cart. In his 
Hibcrnia Ctcriosa, Mr. Bush ' gives the following graphic 
account of the various uses to which the cart was put in 
1764: 

^If^ut the drollest and most diverting kind of conveyance for 
your genteel and ungenteel parties of pleasure is what they call 

' J. Bush, '"'Hibernia Curiosa. A Letter from a Gentleman in Dublin to 
his Friend at Dover in Kent. Giving a general View of the Manners, Cus- 
toms, Dispositions, etc. of the Inhabitants of Ireland. . . . Collected in a 
Tour through the Kingdom in the Year 1764," p. 30. Dublin, 1769. 

159 



i6o 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



here the Chaise-marine^ which is nothing less or more than any 
common car with one horse. A simple kind of carriage, con- 
structed with a pair of wheels, or thin round blocks, of about 
twenty inches in diameter, an axle, and two shafts, which, over 




Fig. 33. 
Irish Low-Back Car (1769) ; after Bush. 

the axle, are spread out a little wider than by the sides of the 
horse, and framed together with cross pieces, in such manner as 
to be nearly in a level position for three or four feet across the 
axle. These simple constructions are almost the only kind of 
carts, in common use, for the carrying or moving of goods, 
merchandise of every kind, hay, straw, corn, dung, turf, etc., 
throughout the kingdom. 

" A sketch of the figure and construction of one of these cars 
I have here given, and, when used for parties of pleasure, on the 
level part LL is laid a mat, for the commonalty, and for the 
genteeler sort of people a bed is put on this; and half a dozen 
get on, two behind and two on each side, and away they drive, 
with their feet not above six inches from the ground as they sit, 
on little pleasurable jaunts of three or four or half a dozen miles 
out of town ; and are the most sociable carriages in use, for ten or 
a dozen will take one of these chaise-marines^ and ride it by turns, 



THE ORIGIN OF THE IRISH JAUNTING-CAR l6l 

the rate being seldom, in such cases, more than foot pace. I 
assure you they are the drollest, merriest curricles you ever saw. 
We were infinitely diverted at meeting many of these feather-bed 
chaise-Diarine parties, on the Sunday that we landed, coming out 
of town, as we went up to it from Dunlary." ^ 

Twelve years later the author of A Tour through Ireland'^ 
alludes to the same method of conveyance. Afterdescrib- 
ing the ordinary block-wheel car, he continues: " .^hey are 
frequently used as vehicles for the common people on their, 
parties of pleasure; a bed or a mat is at such times placed 
on the car, and half a dozen people sit on it, with their legs 
hanging a few inches from the ground ; they are generally 
dragged a foot-pace." The author (Twiss) was severely 
criticised after the appearance of this book, and subse- 
quently he printed a metrical reply to his critics, which, 
though it gives an amusing description of the embryonic 
jaunting-car, can scarcely be credited with mollifying them. 
His ** Heroic Answer " Ms as follows: 

*^Well might an artist travel from afar 
To view the structure of a low-backed car. 
A downy mattress on the car is laid. 
The rev' rend father mounts, and tender maid; 
Some back to back, some side by side are placed. 

By dozens thus, full many a Sunday morn. 
With dangling legs the jovial crowd is borne; 
Clontarf they seek, or Howth's aspiring brow, 
Or Lexlip, smiling on the stream below. 
When ease and cheapness would thy Twiss engage. 
Cars be preferr'd to noddies or to stage." 

^ The accompanying illustration is taken from the Dublin edition ; the book 
was reprinted in London in the same year, but the corresponding illustration 
was evidently taken from a very poor sketch, and shows an almost impossible 
sort of vehicle. - Twiss, A Tour through Ireland, London, 1776, p. 3. 

^ Repository, a Collection of Fugitive Pieces, ed. by J. Reed, 1790. 



1 62 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Fifty years later the old low-back car was nearly com- 
pletely superseded throughout Ireland by the ordinary cart. 
The Halls ' thus describe it in its declining days: 

j' The car, or rather cart, used by the peasantry, requires 
some notice. Flat boards are placed across it, and upon these 
straw is laid, and often a feather bed. The one described in the 
engraving has the old-fashioned wheels cut out of a solid piece 
of wood. These vehicles are now, however, nearly obsolete; we 
met but few of them during our latest journey; their unfitness 
having been understood, they have given way before modern 
improvement." 

Hone, in his Every-day Book (1824), ii., p. 239, says that 
the country car always had the wheels outside the shafts; 
ropes were intertwisted across the rails (Fig. 25), and on 
these a ticking stuffed with straw, or a quilt, was laid. 
^ About the beginning of this century it occurred to some 
one in Dublin to protect the legs of passengers from getting 
in the way of the wheels, and from being splashed with the 
mud, by attaching a foot-board to the sides of the flat cart. 
Two boards were also placed along the cart in such a way as 
to support the travellers' backs and to leave a space between 
them in which the luggage could be placed. As in the case 
of many other inventors, the name has not been preserved 
of this benefactor to the riding public of Ireland. This 
obvious improvement at once " caught on," and, in 1806, 
Sir John Carr ^ makes one of his first allusions to the jaunt- 
ing-car. He says: 

"Upon the road we saw several carriages peculiar to the 
country: that which struck me most was the jaunting-car, an 

^ Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, Ireland : its Scenery, Character, etc., London, 
1841, i., p. 65. 

^ John Carr, The Stranger in Ireland ; or a Tour in . . . etc., in the year 
i8ojy London, 1806, p. 32. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE IRISH JAUNTING-CAR 1 63 

open carriage, mounted upon two small wheels, drawn by one 
horse, in which the company sit back to back, and hence the 
Irish, in badinage, call it an Irish vis-a-vis j whilst, on the other 
hand, considering the position of the parties and of the coach- 
man, who is elevated in front, I have heard it more appropriately, 
though less delicately, nominated the cid-a-cul. This carriage is 
very convenient and easy, and will carry six persons besides the 
coachman." ^ 

Thirty years later Mr. Inglis "^ informs us that the car had 
spread all over Ireland : 

^Although there are carriages of all descriptions in Ireland, 
and coaches too on many of the public roads, the jaunting-car is 
the national vehicle, and Ireland would scarcely be Ireland 
without it. It may be said completely to supersede, as a private 
vehicle, the whole of the gig tribe — dennet, tilbury, cabriolet, 
etc. — and to be a formidable rival to the coach as a public 
conveyance." 

Two years later Barrow "^ published his Tour round Ire- 
land ; but he does not give a flattering account of the 
jaunting-car of his date, and this and Maclise's etching of 
such a car in rainy weather which illustrated Barrow's book 
were severely handled by a patriotic reviewer in the Dublin 
Penny Journal of May 21, 1836. Two woodcuts, which are 
said to be caricatures, are given on p. 371 ; but they illus- 
trate the kind of jaunting-car then in vogue. Barrow thus 

^ This paragraph was transcribed by E. Dubois in his jeu d' esprit on Sir 
John's book : E. Dubois, " My Pocket Book, or Hints for a Ryghte Merrie and 
Conceited Tour in 4to., to be called ' The Stranger in Ireland in 1805, by a 
Knight Errant,' and dedicated to the paper-makers," London, 1807. Neither 
Carr's nor Dubois' figures of the jaunting-car are of sufficient interest to be 
reproduced here. 

- H. D. Inglis, Ireland in i8j4. A Journey throughout Ireland, London, 
1834, i., p. 24. 

^ Barrow, A Tour round Ireland^ through the Sea-coast Counties, in the year 
iSsS-, London, 1836. 



164 THE STUDY OF MAN 

relates his first experience of this vehicle. Immediately on 
his arrival at Kingstown he was asked : 

"2i Would your honour plase to have an inside or an outside 
car ? ' ' My good fellow, let me know what the difference is, 
and I will tell you.' ' The difference, sure, is this: the inside 
car has the wheels outside, and the outside car the wheels inside.' 
After this luminous exposition, I thought it best to see them, and 
made choice of an outside one. ' What shall I do,' said I, ' if 
it rains ? ' ' Change sides wid me, your honour, and if the rain 
comes in front, go over to the opposite side and take it in the 



An earlier writer in that famous publication, The Dublin 
Penny Journal, has displayed his patriotism by singing the 
praises of the jaunting-car : 

V Who that has watched," writes the anonymous author, " the 
beautiful daughters of the ' Green Isle ' borne through the streets 
of our extending metropolis on this handsome and commodious 
vehicle ' ' [the author is here referring to a private car, as con- 
trasted with the cars that plied for hire], " that will not feel 
curious to know from what humble principle it has thus risen to 
perfection. And in good time have I met with Master Bush's 
Hibernia Curiosa ; he was a careful and observant traveller." 
[The quotation is then printed which we have just given from 
Bush.] " Such was the jaunting-car of Ireland in 1764, and 
could the honest gentleman to whom we are indebted for this 
description ' revisit the glimpses of the moon,' and see the 
vehicle of 1832, how great would be his praises and surprise." 
(Vol. i., July 14, 1832, p. 20, with woodcut.) 

In their charming book on Ireland Mr. and Mrs. S. C. 
Hall * refer at length to the various vehicles in use in 1841 : 

^ Loc. cit., p. 64. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE IRISH JAUNTING-CAR 165 

'• The outside jaunting-car is that to which especial reference 
is made when speaking of the ' Irish ' car. It is exceedingly 
light, presses very little upon the horse, and is safe as well as 
convenient; so easy is it to get on and off, that both are fre- 
quently done while the machine is in motion. It is always driven 
with a single horse; the driver occupies a small seat in front, and 
the travellers sit back-to-back,' the space between them being 
occupied by ' the well ' — a sort of boot for luggage ; but when 
there is only one passenger the driver usually places himself on 
the opposite seat ' to balance the car,' the motion of which 
would be awkward if one side was much heavier than the other. 




Fig. 34. 
Early Form of Jaunting-Car (1841) ; after Hall. 

The foot ' board ' is generally of iron, and is made to move on 
hinges, so that it may be turned up to protect the cushions during 
rain. This foot-board projects considerably beyond the wheels, 
and would seem to be dangerous; but in cases of collision with 
other vehicles, a matter of no very rare occurrence, the feet are 
raised, and injury is sustained only by the machine. The private 
cars of this description are, of course, neatly and carefully made, 
and have a character of much elegance ; but those which are hired 
are, in general, badly built, dirty, and uncomfortable; yet in 
nine places out of ten the traveller has no chance of obtaining a 

^ This arrangement has been characterised as unsocial ; but conversation is 
easily carried on by leaning across " the well." Its disadvantage is that the 
eye can take in but the half of a landscape. 



1 66 THE STUDY OF MAN 

vehicle of any other description, and will often find, even in a 
populous town, that if ' the car ' be out, he must wait until its 
return; cars are seldom more numerous than ' head inns,' that is 
to say, one generally suffices for a town. 

J'* Clonmel has been rendered ' famous ' in modern Irish his- 
tory by the successful exertions of a single individual, of whom 
it is not too much to say that he has done more to improve the 
condition of the peasantry and the country than any other person 
of our age. We refer to Mr. Charles Bianconi, and the travelling- 
cars that bear his name. He is a native of Milan; and about the 
year 1800 voyaged to Ireland, first visiting Dublin, and subse- 
quently settling in Clonmel, where he carried on the trade of a 
picture dealer and cleaner and frame maker, but upon a very 
limited scale. ... By habits of industry, prudence, and 
forethought he contrived to save money. . . . He conceived 
the design of running a public car, that by conveying passengers 
at a much less expense than the stage coaches, might answer the 
purposes of the comparatively humbler classes. He ran his first 
car — from Clonmel to Cahir — on the 5th of July, 1815. The ex- 
periment was very discouraging at the commencement; he was 
frequently for whole weeks without obtaining a passenger; but 
his energy and perseverance ultimately triumphed, and he has 
succeeded in obtaining a large fortune for himself while con- 
ferring immense benefit on the community; having preserved an 
irreproachable character and gained the respect of all classes." ^ 

The Halls inform us that in 1840 Bianconi's stud consisted 
of 1300 horses, " a larger number than her Majesty posses- 
ses in Ireland," his cars travelled daily 3500 miles, and 
visited no fewer than 128 cities and towns. It is difficult at 
the present time, with our intricate system of traffic, to realise 
what a boon Bianconi's cars must have been to the residents 
in the more remote country towns and districts, though 
we may well believe that matters had improved since 1760, 
when Derrick wrote that he set out from Cork for Killarney 

^ Loc. cit., ii., p. 76. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE IRISH JAUNTING-CAR 167 

"(Jm horseback, the city of Corke not affording at this time 
any sort of carriage for hire.'' 

The sympathetic travellers, from whom so much has 
already been quoted, carefully describe the various vehicles 
they came across in Ireland. One more extract must be 
made : 

Jf^Machines for travelling in Ireland are, some of them at least, 
peculiar to the country. The stage-coaches are precisely similar 
to those in England, and travel at as rapid a rate. They, of 
course, run upon all the great roads, and are constructed with 
due regard to safety and convenience. The public cars of M. 
Bianconi have, however, to a large extent, displaced the regular 
coaches, and are to be encountered in every district of the south 
of Ireland. In form they resemble the common outside jaunting- 
car, but are calculated to hold twelve, fourteen, or sixteen per- 
sons; they are well horsed, have cautious and experienced drivers, 
are generally driven with three horses, and usually travel at the 
rate of seven Irish miles an hour; the fares averaging about two- 
pence per mile. They are open cars; but a huge apron of leather 
affords considerable protection against rain; and they may be 
described as, in all respects, very comfortable and convenient 
vehicles. It would be difificult for a stranger to conceive the im- 
mense influence which this establishment has had upon the char- 
acter and condition of the country; its introduction, indeed, has 
been only second to that of steam in promoting the improvement 
of Ireland, by facilitating intercourse between remote districts, 
and enabling the farmer to transact his own business at a small 
expense and with little sacrifice of time." ^ 

All subsequent travellers in the remoter parts of Ireland 
have profited by the example set by Bianconi, for '* long- 
cars," as they are usually termed, are still an important 
means of conveyance. 

Like Bianconi, the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour was im- 

^ Loc. cit., i., p. 63. 



1 68 THE STUDY OF MAN 

pressed with the fact that a facile and cheap means of con- 
veyance is essential to material progress, and so he instituted 
the system of light railways in Ireland. Whether this 
scheme has succeeded or not, or whether a service of (auto- 
cars may not prove to be more efficacious, may be open to 
question ; but there can be no question as to the desirability, 
one may safely say the necessity, of cheap and rapid means 
of conveyance. 

By comparing the illustrations of the outside car of fifty 
years ago (Fig. 32) with that of the present day (Plate V., 
Fig. 2), one can at a glance see that the machine has been 
greatly improved, the last refinement being the addition of 
pneumatic tires to the wheels. 

It is not devoid of interest to consider how far the evolu- 
tion of the cart and ou/tside car can be compared with the 
evolution of animals, and perhaps the analogy is not so far 
fetched as it may appear at first sight. 

In both cases the evolution is undirected so far as the 
subjects of it are concerned; but in the case of the cart the 
evolution is determined by a reasoning being, instead of by 
" natural selection." An extended study of the history 
and evolution of manufactured objects leads one, however, 
to the conclusion that the human intelligence does not make 
itself so much felt as one would expect. As a general rule 
the improvements on previous objects are slight, and often 
take a long time to be discovered ; but when once adopted 
there is a tendency for them to spread with comparative 
rapidity, and to be subject to a number of progressive 
modifications, until another stationary phase is arrived at. 
In other words, the process of evolution of manufactured 
objects is apt to be spasmodic; periods of active metamor- 
phosis are preceded and succeeded by periods of stagnation.^ 

So far as the palseontological evidence goes, while one 



Plate V. 




Fig. I. Basque Ox- Waggon ; after Telesforo de Aranzadi. 




P'iG. 2. Irish Outside- or Jaunting-Car ; from a photograph by Welch. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE IRISH JAUNTING-CAR 1 69 

may be convinced that the fossil remains of a given period 
are genetically related to those of the beds above and below 
it, one cannot always be sure whether certain fossils are 
actually related in the direct line to other remains in a super- 
posed stratum. There may be strong presumptive evidence 
without a positive assurance — the record being too imper- 
fect for absolute proof. 

Among living animals we find forms in any one group 
which belong to various stages of specialisation. In some 
cases highly specialised types may live side by side with 
comparatively undifferentiated forms, the latter often recall- 
ing, though in an imperfect degree, some of the stages 
through which the higher type may have previously passed, 
(it is not always easy to suggest a reason why some low 
types should persist and others perish^ The fact remains 
that such is the case. In almost all groups of animals we 
have examples of the persistence of some types for periods 
which, even speaking in a geological sense, may be termed 
vast. 

The persistence of the slide-car and various forms of 
block-wheel car is thus analogous to what we find among 
animals. The reason for this continuance is another matter, 
and requires an explanation, though we cannot expect that 
this will hold good for carts and animals alike. 

We may provisionally assume that the solid wheel, in all 
countries, preceded the spoke-wheel, wherever the latter oc- 
curs, except in those cases where the spoke-wheel was intro- 
duced into a previously wheelless district. The spoke-wheel 
could never have been invented de novo. As primitive types 
may persist under certain conditions, we may further as- 
sume that existing vehicles with solid wooden wheels are the 
direct descendants of more ancient types, and where they 
occur along with spoke-wheels they may be regarded as lag- 
gards in evolution. 



I/O THE STUDY OF MAN 

The argument for the sHde-car is not so satisfactory. 
There is no proof whatever that the sHde-car was the first 
stage in the evolution of the cart, either in Ireland or else- 
where. Probably the evidence will never be conclusive on 
this point. There is a strong presumption in favour of this 
theory for the British Islands ; but as the vast bulk of our 
culture was derived from the mainland of Europe, we may 
have owed our primitive carts to the Celts. Classical au- 
thorities agree in ascribing the use of carts or waggons and 
chariots to the Gauls and other Celtic tribes, and we know 
that two thousand five hundred years ago these peoples had 
both solid-wheeled and spoke-wheeled vehicles, but there 
is no mention made of the slide-car. It is a curious fact 
that block-wheels and their variants {i. e.^ those wheels that 
are without radiating spokes) are found in many of the 
least Aryanised parts of Europe; and it is tempting to sup- 
pose this may be the characteristic wheel of the pre-Aryan 
agriculturalists. 

(There are numerous striking examples of the persistence 
of non-specialised animals in the remote parts of the earth. 
For example, the mud-fishes are found only in Australia, 
parts of Central Africa, and tropical South America. The 
great, running, flightless birds, such as the ostrich, occur 
only in New Zealand, Australia, New Guinea, and some 
neighbouring islands, Africa, and South America. The 
lowest of all the mammals, the egg-laying duck-mole, is 
found only in Australia and Tasmania, while the spiny ant- 
eater also extends into New Guinea. These examples could 
be greatly increased, but they will suffice to illustrate this 
point. 

nrhe generally received explanation of these facts is that 
the ancestors of these forms at one time inhabited the 
northern continents, and, as opportunity offered, they grad- 
ually extended southwards, and owing to sinking in the 



THE ORIGIN OF THE IRISH JAUNTING-CAR 17I 

earth's crust, or to other geographical changes, they became 
isolated in the more remote spots. For some reason or 
other, which does not concern us now, the great northern 
continents were the seat of the evolution of the higher forms 
of mammalian life, perhaps even of vertebrates generally, and 
in the keenness of the struggle for existence the less special- 
ised forms were usually at a disadvantage, and if they could 
not adapt themselves to new conditions they had to die out. 
The great southern land areas were only temporarily con- 
nected with the northern lands at various periods, and so 
they received consignments of low-grade animals at various 
periods, and these lower types were able to continue. \£or 
example. New Zealand was cut off from the rest of the 
world before any snakes or terrestrial mammals had wan- 
dered so far. Australia received a contingent of only the two 
lowest groups of mammals. Africa, south of Sahara, for a 
long time was stocked with other mammals of a low type, 
for it is only comparatively recently that the higher mam- 
mals, such as elephants, antelopes, lions, leopards, and the 
like, have been able to migrate from their home in Europe 
and to swarm across or around the Sahara barrier; but being 
higher types they have supplanted and largely exterminated 
the lower forms. 

This is pretty much what we find among the carts we 
have studied. In some of the remote and backward parts 
of the mainland of Europe lumbering carts with solid 
wooden wheels still persist. In the western parts of the 
British Islands, where competition has not been so keen, 
earlier types have been isolated and continued down to our 
own day, and it may well be that the slide-car is really an 
ancestral form which has been preserved in the islands at 
the fag-end of Europe. 

There are also some points of interest in connection with 
the evolution of the jaunting-car. There is contemporary 



1/2 THE STUDY OF MAN 

evidence to show that the means for the conveyance of 
passengers in Ireland up to the beginning of this century- 
left a great deal to be desired. Hackney-coaches had been 
introduced from England, but they were expensive to hire. 
One-horse vehicles appear to have been employed in Ireland 
long before the London cab was borrowed from Paris, which 
was virtually in 1823, although nine cabriolets were licensed 
for parts of London in 1805. ;Mr. Hansom did not invent 
his two-wheeled modification till 1834; but the present 
*' hansom-cab " was really the invention of Mr. John Chap- 
man, who patented it at the end of 1836. 

Early in the eighteenth century the ** Ringsend Car" 
plied between Dublin and Irishtown. It consisted, accord- 
ing to the authors ^ of a History of the City of Dublin, of a 
seat suspended on a strap of leather between two shafts, and 
without springs." The noise made by the creaking of this 
strap, which supported the whole weight of the company, 
peculiarly distinguished this mode of conveyance. This 
was succeeded by the ** Noddy," a kind of cramped, covered 
one-horse shay, and so called from its oscillating motion 
backwards and forwards; it disappeared about the same 
time as the century. The low-backed car was then in pro- 
cess of evolution into the jaunting-car, but, in 1806, a new 
vehicle sprang into existence ; this was the noisy four- 
wheeled '* Jingle," which had a period of popularity for 
thirty years, and finally gave place to the outside jaunting- 
car. The inside jaunting-car was also in use about this 
time ; it may have had its origin from seats being placed 
along the sides of an ordinary cart -in such a manner that 
the passengers faced one another, their legs being inside the 
conveyance. A little later, a cover was added to the latter, 
and so the ** covered car " was arrived at, the last of which, 

^ J. Warburton, J. Whitelaw, and R. Walsh, History of the City of Dublin, 
London, 1818, ii., p. 1173. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE IRISH JAUNTING-CAR 1 73 

it is stated, was seen in Dublin some dozen or so years ago. 
All these one-horse vehicles have been beaten in the struggle 
for existence by the outside or jaunting-car, which has prac- 
tically not only vanquished coaches in the past, but has pre- 
vented the hansom-cab from establishing itself in Dublin. 
The ordinary cab is too useful in wet weather and for carrying 
luggage to be much affected by the competition of the car. 
We have seen how rapidly this vehicle spread over Ire- 
land, being adapted in many ways to the country. It was 
elongated by Bianconi, and proved in his hands, and in 
those of his imitators, an important factor in the betterment 
of the condition of the small farmer in country districts. 
^\There was a need in Dublin during the last century for 
light one-horse vehicles ; several writers connect this with 
the fashion at that time for sea-bathing. In response to 
the demand came a supply ; the slow ** Ringsend Car " gave 
place to the objectionable " Noddy," the rackety " Jingle " 
supplanted the ** Noddy," and had a short but brilliant 
career. When the " Noddy " was in its decline, the pre- 
historic, low-backed car was unostentatiously being trans- 
formed into the outside car, and when it was perfected the 
noisy, swift '* Jingle " yielded to the superior qualities of 
its rival. All these vehicles were of purely local origin, but, 
so far as the available evidence shows, the jaunting-car 
alone belongs to the same sequence as the ordinary Irish 
cart of the last century. 



^CHAPTER VIII 
TOYS AND GAMES: CAT'S CRADLE AND KITES 

AT first sight it does not appear that games played by 
children would afford a very profitable field for invest- 
igation, but if we wish to learn all we can about mankind 
no branch of inquiry should be neglected. I shall endeavour 
in this and the following chapters to indicate some of the 
conclusions which may be drawn therefrom. 

The games played by children have a very varied origin, 
and a similarly unequal value to the student. Before we 
consider the games played by our children it is desirable to 
glance at those played by savages. 

The children of savages play at the occupations of their 
elders, and the boys will have their toy bows and arrows; 
where the natives spear fish, boys and girls will have toy 
fishing-spears, with which they attempt to catch fish. They 
play with toy canoes, and so forth. Even when the adults 
have discarded a weapon such as the bow and arrow for a 
more serviceable weapon, the children will continue their 
toy — whether it be in New Guinea or in England. Our 
English boys still delight in the implements of warfare of 
their barbaric ancestors, such as the bow and arrow, the 
sling, the sword and shield. The memory of these has been 
preserved from generation to generation through the un- 
broken continuity of boyish practice. 

Games of ball have now with us purely a diversional char- 

174 



TOYS AND GAMES 1 75 

acter, but it seems probable that even this harmless amuse- 
ment has a somewhat sinister history. 

Mr. Newell, the distinguished American folklorist, reminds 
us that in England, country folk speak of the " camp-game " 
of ball and of the " camping-ground." Pollux, writing in 
Greek in the second century, gave an account of the " com- 
mon ball," or " ball-battle," of his day. Almost exactly 
the same was the ancient Norse game, except that the 
resemblance to warfare was closer. Playing the game was 
called " kcmping^'' from Kemp, a warrior or champion, and 
the field was a " kemping-ground." The Persians and 
Turks still practise a different sort of game, which is played 
on horseback. The Byzantine court adopted from the East 
the playing on horseback and the racket, but introduced 
these into a game resembling the ancient " ball-battle." 
The historian Cinnamus describes the Emperor Manuel, in 
the twelfth century, as fond of this kind of polo. 

From the Eastern custom we get our tennis, whilst, ac- 
cording to Newell, most of our games with bat and ball seem 
to have come down to us from the North. " The history of 
the change from actual to imitative warfare, from the latter 
to a harmless and courtly amusement or to a rustic pastime, 
from this last again in our days to a scientific sport, may 
supply material for serious reflection." ^ These early games 
of ball were evidently martial exercises, and encouraged for 
the purpose of keeping the young men in good condition 
for actual warfare. 

Our children also copy the actions of their parents, but it 
is noteworthy that they prefer the more primitive to the 
more civilised pursuits, and their games retain more of the 
savage character than is typical of nineteenth-century cul- 
ture. The love of playing with dolls and of dressing and 

' W. W. Newell, Games and Songs of American Children, New York, 
1884, pp. 177, 178. 



1/6 THE STUDY OF MAN 

tending them, and of pretending to keep house, of preparing 
food, and other characteristics of girlhood, fall into the 
same category as the hunting and martial games of boys. 

There are other games which may be regarded as being 
more purely diversional in character, as, for example, cer- 
tain of the games of ball and numerous other simple amuse- 
ments. Many of these are played equally by adults and 
children, whether savage or civilised. 

Mr. Stewart Culin, who has made the study of games a 
specialty, and who has written a valuable and beautifully 
illustrated work on the subject, from which I have made 
many gleanings, emphasises the fact that while games occur 
as amusements or pastimes among civilised men, among 
savage and barbarous peoples they are largely sacred and 
divinatory; and this naturally suggests a sacred and divin- 
atory origin for many modern games. The latter have, 
however, so nearly lost their original meaning, that even 
with the light afforded by history it is practically impossible 
to trace their origin. The only other available method of 
inquiry is the comparative one, and it will be found that I 
have largely availed myself of this in the following essays, 
though I have employed the more strictly historical method 
wherever possible. 

" Games," ^ says Culin, " must be regarded, not as conscious 
inventions [here he is speaking in general terms], but as survivals 
from primitive conditions, under which they originated in magical 
rites and chiefly as a means of divination. Based upon certain 
fundamental conceptions of the universe, they are characterised 
by a certain sameness, if not identity, throughout the world. 
Without the confirmation of linguistic evidence, they are insuffi- 
cient to establish the connection of races or the transference of 
culture." 

' Stewart Culin, Korean Ga7?ies : with N'otes on the Corresponding Games of 
China and Japan, Philadelphia, 1895. Introduction, pp. xvii.-xix., xxxiv. 



TOYS AND GAMES lyy 

The most important point elucidated by Culin is the 
proof of the early use of arrows for divining purposes. For 
convenience the arrows were flattened, and ultimately were 
replaced by long narrow strips of cardboard, on one side of 
which was painted a distinctive device, while on the other 
was a queer design, which is evidently the conventional 
representation of the scar of the leaf which primitively 
marked the shaft of the arrow when it was actually a reed 
(Fig. 35). These elongated cards were shortened and broad- 
ened, and from them have been derived our modern playing- 



FiG. 35- 

Back of a Korean Playing-Card ; after Culin. 

This figure was kindly lent by the proprietors of the Reliquary and Illustrated 

A rchcFologist. 

cards, which even now retain amongst the credulous a 
divinatory property, and are also still used for gambling as 
well as for more innocent amusement. Korean playing- 
cards still bear representations of the feathers of the arrows 
from which they were derived, and their Chinese name 
varies only in tone from that of the arrow, tsin. 

In the fourth year of the Hejira, Mohammed prohibited 
wine and Meisir ; the latter was a gambling game of the 
heathen Arabs, in which seven arrows were shaken from a 
quiver. 

Another remarkable evolution from the employment of 
arrows in divination is that of the Chinese dominoes, and 
Europe has borrowed this game from China. Culin calcu- 
lates that of the ninety-seven Korean games described by 
him, twenty-three may be referred to the arrow employed as 
an implement of magic or divination. 

Lastly, there are games and toys which are the secularised 



178 THE STUDY OF MAN 

and degenerate survivals of magical practices other than 
purely divinatory, and even of religious rites, although these 
two often merge into one another. 

I have taken a few games and toys, and have endeavoured 
to work out their history as an illustration of the methods 
of modern research. The evidence is at present incomplete, 
but we cannot satisfactorily determine the game of cat's 
cradle, with which I commence, or that of the top, in the 
following chapter, to be other than simple diversions. The 
tug-of-war was probably a magical rite, and kite-flying had 
apparently a religious significance. Finally, the bull-roarer 
at the present day represents the three aspects of amuse- 
ment, magic, and religion. 

cat's cradle. 

One child holds a piece of string joined at the ends on his 
upheld palms, a single turn being taken over each, and by 
inserting the middle finger of each hand under the opposite 
turn, crosses the string from finger to finger in a peculiar 
form. Another child then takes off the string on his fingers 
in a rather different way, and it then assumes a second 
form. A repetition of this manoeuvre produces a third 
form, and so on. Each of these forms has a particular 
name, from a fancied resemblance to the object — barn-doors, 
bowling-green, hour-glass, pound, net, fiddle, fish-pond, 
diamonds, and others.' 

The following forms are those known to Mrs. Gomme. 
They are produced seriatim. 

1. The cradle. 

2. The soldier's bed. 

3. Candles. 

4. The cradle inversed, or manger. 

5. Soldier's bed again, or diamonds. 

' Notes and Queries, vol. xi., p. 421. 



CAT'S CRADLE 1 79 

6. Diamonds, or cat's eyes, 

7. Fish in dish. 

8. Cradle, as at first. 

The different orders or arrangements must be taken from 
the hands of one player by another without disturbing the 
arrangement. 

Nares suggests that the proper name is " Cratch Cradle," 
and is derived from the archaic word cratchj^ meaning a 
manger.* He gives several authorities for its use. The 
first-made form is not unlike a manger. Moor [Suffolk 
Words) gives the names as cat's cradle, barn-doors, bowling- 
green, hour-glass, pound, net, diamonds, fish-pond, fiddle. 
A supposed resemblance originated them. Britton {Beauties 
of Wiltshire, Glossary) says the game in London schools is 
called " Scratch-scratch," or ** Scratch-cradle." ^ 

Amongst other Korean games Mr. Culin * has investigated 
that known as Ssi-teu-ki, or " Woof-taking." It is practi- 
cally identical with our cat's cradle, as is usually played by 
girls. The figures, which are the same as in our own child- 
ren's play, are named as follows: (i) cover for hearse, (2) 
chess-board, (3) chop-sticks, (4) cow's eyeball, (5) rice-mill 
pestle. 

" In Japan cat's cradle is called aya ito tori — * woof pattern 
string-taking.' The figures are identical with those in Korea, 
but receive different names, (i) [?]; (2) nekomata^ defined as 
* a mountain cat, into which a domestic cat is supposed to trans- 

' In the Century Dictionary the tenii cratch has two meanings, "a grated 
manger," " a rack or open framework." 

^ Murray, in The New English Dictionary ^ does not support this etymology. 

^ This account of the English game, with the references, is taken from Mrs, 
Gomme's " The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland," i., 
Dictionary of British Folk-Lore^ Part i., 1894, p. 61. 

^ Stewart Culin, Korean Games : with Notes on the Corresponding Games of 
China and Japan, Philadelphia, 1895, p. 30. 



l80 THE STUDY OF MAN 

form itself'; (3) koto^ a musical instrument, or geta no ha^ the 
two pieces of wood under the soles of clogs; (4) umano me^ horse- 
eye; (5) tsuzuini, a musical instrument. 

" In South China cat's cradle is called ka?ig sok, which means 
literally * well-rope.' It is spoken of as an amusement for girls, 
but is known to all Cantonese labourers. They make the same 
figures as those of Korea and Japan, but do not, they tell me, 
give them names. The order of the figures, after the first, is not 
necessarily that here given." 

Miss Fielde ^ says that the Chinese of Swatow call cat's 
cradle " sawing wood," in allusion to the final act in the 
performance. 

Dr. A. R. Wallace, the famous traveller, who formulated 
a theory of natural selection synchronously with Darwin, 
thus describes ^ his finding this game in Borneo : 



i 



* One wet day in a Dyak house, when a number of boys and 
young men were about me, I thought to amuse them with some- 
thing new, and showed them how to make * cat's cradle ' with a 
piece of string. Greatly to my surprise, they knew all about it, 
and more than I did, for, after I and Charles had gone through all 
the changes we could make, one of the boys took it off my hand, 
and made several new figures which quite puzzled me. They 
then showed me a number of other tricks with pieces of string, 
which seemed a favourite amusement with them." 

Lieutenant de Crespigny ^ writes of the Dusuns of Borneo : 
Near me were two children playing at ' cat's cradle ' 
exactly as I remembered to have played it in my own child- 
hood. " 

' A Corner of Cathay^ New York, 1894, p. 87. 
* A. R. Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, i., 1869, p. 183. 
^ Proc. R. Geogr. Soc, ii., 1858, p. 344. Quoted from H. Ling Roth, The 
Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, i., 1896, p. 366. 



CAT'S CRADLE l8l 

The knowledge of this game was probably common to the 
members of the Polynesian stock before they separated 
into different groups, as we find it in the Eastern Pacific in 
Mangaia, one of the Hervey Group, and again, so far south 
as New Zealand. 

Dr. W. Wyatt Gill,' the illustrious missionary of the 
Hervey Group, informs us that '* cat's cradle {at) was a great 
delight to old and young. Teeth were called into play to 
help the fingers. One complication, in which the cord in 
the centre is twisted into a long slender stem, and therefore 
called * the coco-nut tree,' I have never known a European 
to unravel." 

Two early travellers give us the following accounts of the 
game as it is played in New Zealand : 

" He what ox 7jzaut. — The * cat's cradle ' is a game very similar 
to our own, but the cord is made to assume many more forms, 
and these are said to be different scenes in their mythology, such 
as Hine-nui-te-po, Mother Night bringing forth her progeny, 
Maru and the gods, and Maui fishing up the land. Men, canoes, 
houses, etc., are also represented. Some state that Maui invented 
this game." "^ 

"J[n the game of Maui they are great proficients. This is a 
game like that called * cat's cradle ' in Europe, and consists of 
very complicated and perplexing puzzles with a cord tied together 
at the ends. It seems to be intimately connected with their 
ancient traditions, and in the different figures which the cord is 
made to assume, whilst held on both hands, the outlines of their 
different varieties of houses, canoes, or figures of men and women 
are imagined to be represented. Maui, the Adam of New Zea- 
land, left this amusement to them as an inheritance." ^ 

^ W. Wyatt Gill, Life in the Southern Isles, 1876, p. 65. 
* R. Taylor, TV Ika a Maui ; or. New Zealand and its Inhabitants, London, 
1855, p. 172. 

^ E. Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, vol. ii., London, 1843, P- 32. 



1 82 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Tregear ' also mentions the representation of Tawhaki 
(lightning) ascending to heaven. 

These statements are very interesting, and suggest that 
we have here to do with some symbolism that has in course 
of time become obscured. On the other hand, Maui may 
be merely a pastime, and the string figures or designs may 
be nothing more than casual illustrations of the mythology 
of the natives. There do not appear to be sufficient data at 
present to settle this point. 

Dr. Codrington '^ says : " Cat's cradle, in Lepers' Island 
lelegaro, in Florida honggo, with many figures, is common 
throughout the [Melanesian] Islands." 

The Motu children of Port Moresby, in the south-eastern 
peninsula of New Guinea, are as well versed in the intrica- 
cies of cat's cradle as are our own.^ 

(I remember once going into a native hut in an island in 
Torres Straits, and seeing a little black boy playing with a 
piece of string, the two ends of which were tied together, 
in much the same manner as our children play at cat's cradle. 
The first figure that he made with it was precisely the same 
as our " cradle," but the subsequent ones were different. 
He was greatly surprised when I picked the string off his 
hands to make " the soldier's bed," which I then trans- 
formed into " the candles," back into the " reversed man- 
ger," and from that into " the diamonds," and so on. I 
found that a couple of natives did not play together as we 
do, ** taking off" from each other, but that usually each 
played separately. They can make much more elaborate 
devices than ours, and the process is correspondingly elabo- 
rate, and feet and teeth are at times pressed into service. On 

^ E. Tregear, "The Maoris of New Zealand," yourn. Anth. Inst., xix., 
i88q, p. 115. ^ The Melanesians, 1891, p. 341, 

^ \V. Y. Turner, " The Ethnology of the Motu," Journ. Anth. Inst., vii., 
1878, p. 483. 



CAT'S CRADLE 1 83 

the other hand, although many are extremely complicated in 
manipulation, the final result may be simple. The following 
are some of the forms I saw the natives make : A mouth ; a 
coco-nut palm ; liana, or some forest rope-like climber ; 
a fish; a crow; a dog; a crayfish, certain movements of the 
hands represented the motions of the living animal ; a sea- 
snake, which, when the hands were drawn apart, had an un- 
dulating movement, such as sea-snakes have in swimming 
through the water; one figure was intended for a canoe, 
without an outrigger, and another for one with an outrigger; 
one, by a stretch of the imagination, was said to indicate a 
family of one pickaninny (child), and yet another a family 
of two.' 

Among the Australians, Eyre' remarks: ** String puzzles 
are another species of amusement with them. In these a 
European would be surprised to see the ingenuity they 
display and the varied and singular figures which they pro- 
duce. Our juvenile attempts in this way are very meagre and 
uninteresting compared to them." 

Professor E. B. Tylor,^ who has noted some of the refer- 
ences I have just given, says, it is evident that the Dyaks 
and Maories did not learn it from Europeans, and though 
cat's cradle is now known over all Western Europe we can- 
not find any record of it at all ancient in our part of the 
world. It is known in South-east Asia, and he thinks that 
the most plausible explanation seems to be that this is its 
centre of origin, whence it migrated westward into Europe, 
and eastward and southward through Polynesia and into 
Australia. It would be interesting if it could be estab- 

' A. C. Haddon, "The Ethnography of the Western Tribe of Torres 
Straits," yourn. Anth. Inst., xix., 1890, p. 361. 

•^ Central Australia, ii., p. 229. 

^ E. B. Tylor, " Remarks on the Geographical Distribution of Games," 
Journ. Anth. Inst., ix., 1879, p. 26. 



1 84 THE STUDY OF MAN 

lished that this game has travelled in the manner suggested 
by the great Oxford anthropologist. The occurrence of a 
similar string game among the Eskimo requires explanation. 

We know that all over the world, string, cords, and knots 
enter largely into magic, and there may be some forgotten 
or unrecorded connection between cat's cradle and a magical 
rite. The association of cat's cradle with mythology in New 
Zealand is also worth bearing in mind. 

At present we cannot carry the investigation any further 
until more evidence is to hand. It does not appear to me 
improbable that some of these varieties of cat's cradle may 
have been independently invented. 

KITES. 

Although now fairly widely distributed in Europe and 
common enough in England, the kite is a comparatively 
recent plaything in Europe, having been introduced in the 
course of Oriental trade from the far East during the seven- 
teenth century. Strutt, writing in 1801, says he does not 
find " any reason to conclude that it existed here much 
more than a century back," ' and the first record he found 
was in a French and English dictionary, published by 
Miege, A.D. 1690, where among other significations cerf 
volant denoted a " kite." 

Such being the case it is evident there cannot be much to 
learn from a study of kites in Europe, nor have we a great 
variety in forms. The old type with a crescentic upper 
margin is giving place to a diamond- or lozenge-shaped 
form. Occasionally one sees other shapes, but these are 
obviously importations, or imitations, of Chinese or Japanese 
kites. 

* J. Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, 1801, Book 
iv., p. 292. 



KITES 185 

From being a mere toy the kite has recently become a 
scientific instrument. Kites appear to have been first ap- 
plied in meteorology by Alexander Wilson, of Glasgow, 
who, in 1749, raised thermometers attached to kites into the 
clouds/ Three years later, Franklin performed in Philadel- 
phia his celebrated experiment of collecting the electricity 
of the thunder-cloud by means of a kite/ Although kites 
have served a variety of purposes, their first systematic use 
in meteorology was probably in England, between 1883 and 
1885, when E. D. Archibald made differential measurements 
of wind velocity by anemometers, raised by kites fifteen 
hundred feet {Nature, vol. xxxi.). In 1885, A. McAdie re- 
peated Franklin's experiment on Blue Hill, using an elec- 
trometer. Since then there has been a very notable 
development in scientific kite-flying in the United States; 
in Europe, attention has chiefly been directed to balloons, 
though the latter have many disadvantages as compared 
with the former. A kite-balloon is now being tried in the 
German army, but it is inferior to the simple kite for meteor- 
ological researches.^ 

*ljn Washington the Weather Bureau has, under the direction 
of Prof. Willis L. Moore, chief of the Bureau, been carrying on 
an extended investigation into the best kinds of kites for use in 
sending up meteorological instruments. Prof. C. F. Marvin has 
recently minutely described the kind of kite now in use by the 
Bureau.* This kite is a modification of those used by Hargrave 
in Australia, and is not at all like the ordinary kite. Instead of 
being flat, and tapering at the lower end, as in the usual form, 

' Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, x., p. 284. 

'^ Sparks, Works of Benjamin Frankliii, v., p. 295. 

^ Lawrence Rotch, " On obtaining Meteorological Records in the Upper Air, 
by Means of Kites and Balloons," Proc. American Acad. Arts and Sci., xxxii., 
1897 ; reprinted in N^ature, Ivi,, 1897, p. 602. 

^Monthly Weather Rev.. Nov. 1895 



1 86 THE STUDY OF MAN 

these kites are box-shaped, with their ends open and their sides 
partly covered with cloth or silk. This style of kite, which has 
also been in use at Blue Hill for some months, is found to be 
admirably adapted to the purpose for which it is intended, and 
when fine piano wire is used to hold it, instead of twine, is a 
splendid flyer. 

" Clayton, of the Blue Hill Observatory, has for some time 
been using kites to help in determining the altitudes of the base 
of stratus and nimbus. These clouds, which so often cover the 
whole sky with a uniform sheet, can only have their heights de- 
termined under the most favourable circumstances if the ordinary 
theodolite is used. 

" The work done at Blue Hill Observatory with kites was out- 
lined by Clayton before the Boston Scientific Society at a recent 
meeting.^ The kites at present in use are the Eddy, or tailless, 
and the Hargrave, or box-kite. Continued experiments at Blue 
Hill have resulted in the development of scientific kite-flying on 
a remarkable scale. Recent ascents have reached altitudes but 
little short of a mile above sea level; and excellent records have 
been obtained by means of a self-recording instrument which 
gives automatic readings of temperature, pressure, humidity, and 
wind velocity. The meteorological results already obtained are 
of great value, and the full discussion of them is awaited with 
interest. Among the most important matters that have been 
noted is the presence of cold waves and warm waves at consider- 
able elevations some hours before the temperature changes are 
noted at the earth's surface. The prospect of improving our 
weather forecasts by such soundings of the free air is very en- 
couraging, and it is more than likely that before long some prac- 
tical use will be made of these discoveries. 

** The next few years will undoubtedly witness many improve- 
ments in kites used for meteorological purposes, and the United 
States seems to be distinctly in the lead in this work at the pres- 
ent time." ^ 

' Boston Commonwealth, May 9, i8g6, 12-13. 

2 R. De C. Ward, Science {^.'^.), iii.. 1896, p. 801. 



KITES 187 

True to the tradition of thousands of years, the ingenuity 
of Europe is concerned in an endeavour to increase her 
machinery for wari It is extremely difificult for an expert 
marksman to hit even a captive balloon, and it is doubtful 
whether our newest field-gun would be of much service in 
this respect, but a kite would be much more difificult to hit. 
Therefore it really does become of some interest to know 
whether an enemy can by means of a parcel of kites take 
photographs of our defences, and by the same method deto- 
nate over our cities several dozen pounds of nitro-glycerine. 

Captain Baden-Powell, of the Scots Guards, is our great 
authority on kites in England. He makes these toys of our 
childhood on such a scale that they can, with a good wind, 
carry up a staff-officer. He is understood to laugh at bal- 
loons as a means of observing a foe, and to claim that, 
whereas balloons must be a failure when the wind is strong, 
kites will do nearly all their work in a gale or half a gale. 

The use of kites for scientific purposes is obvious enough. 
By their aid real bird's-eye views may be taken with a 
camera flying aloft, the shutter being actuated by mechani- 
cal means or preferably by electricity. ]\Ir. Woglom * gives 
us some specimens of views of New York City taken from 
the neighbourhood of Washington Square. We do not 
know that they show us much more than could be had from 
the roofs of some of the monster buildings which the strait- 
ness of New York necessitates, and which are unhappily not 
unknown now in London. But they at least prove the pos- 
sibility, which the ordinary man might well have doubted, 
of manipulating a camera attached to a kite. If that can be 
done at two hundred feet from the ground while the kite is 
in the air, it can obviously be done at two thousand feet. 

^ Gilbert Totten Woglom, Fara kites : A Treatise 071 the Making and Flying 
of Tailless Kites for Scientific Furposes and for Recreation (G. P. Putnam's 
Sons. iSg6). 



1 88 THE STUDY OF MAN 

" The form of kite from which the ' parakite ' is an evolution 
is the general form of the Asiatic kite, substantially a square, 
whereof the two diagonals are respectively horizontal and verti- 
cal with a convex windward side, the convexity produced by a 
third transverse member which is curved upward as well as to the 
windward face. The Woglom parakite flies without a tail, and 
will not fly properly with one." ^ 

With all our vaunted progress and science we have not so 
very much to pride ourselves upon even in this latest de- 
velopment of military tactics ; for we are, after all, only 
following in the footsteps of the Chinese and Japanese?) 

Kites are said to have been invented by the Chinese Gen- 
eral, Han-Sin, about 200 B.C. He flew in the air figures of 
different forms and colours, and thus signalled from a be- 
sieged town to the army that was coming to his succour.'' 

In a war with Japan, some four hundred years ago, a 
Korean general encouraged his dispirited soldiers, who were 
discouraged by the appearance of falling stars, by secretly 
making a kite, to which he attached a small lantern, and one 
dark night he sent it up. The soldiers accepted this as an 
auspicious omen, and renewed the struggle with increased 
energy. 

Another general flew a kite across an impassable stream ; 
it lodged in a tree on the other side, and by its means he 
pulled a strong cord across and ultimately made a bridge. 

Ui Shosetsu, the Japanese who tried to upset the Tok- 
ugawa government in the seventeenth century, made a large 
kite, to which he fastened himself, and, being carried up 
into the air, he was enabled to overlook the castle of Yedo. 

A famous Japanese robber, Ishikawa Goemon, in the six- 
teenth century, attempted by mounting on a kite to steal 
the two celebrated solid golden fish, which, as finials, 
adorned two spires of the great castle of Nagoya. The fish 

' Loc. cit., p. 16. ^ F. Dillaye, Les Jeux de la yeunesse, 1885, p. 34. 



KITES 



189 



were worth the risk, as they were valued at from ;^i 5,000 to 
^16,000, but the daring thief failed in his purpose. 




Fig. 36. 
Oriental Kites. 

1. A Korean kite, with "crow's feet." 2. A Chinese kite. 3. "Cuttlefish" kite 
from a Japanese drawing (l-:3 after Culin). 4. Kite from the Solomon Islands 
(from a specimen in the British Museum). 



1 90 THE STUDY OF MAN 

It is to the same end of Asia that we must turn if we 
wish to study kites from an anthropological point of view, 
and there we shall find them in profusion, of quaint and 
varied form, brilliant in colour, and in addition we find them 
put to diverse uses and imbued with symbolic significance. 

Nor are the times and seasons for kite-flying unimportant. 
With us kites may be flown all the year round, provided 
there is wind enough ; but, as a matter of fact, spring is the 
more usual season for the sport. In the far East we find 
that definite times are appointed for this exercise. 

In his learned book on Korean Games, Mr. Stewart Culin 
informs us that the time for kite-flying in Korea is the first 
half of the first month; after this time any one would be 
laughed at who flew a kite, nor will any one touch a lost kite. 
(On the fourteenth day of the same month it is customary in 
Korea to write on kites a wish to the effect that the year's 
misfortunes may be carried away with them.) A mother 
does this for a small boy, adding his name and the date of 
his birth. The inscription is written along the bamboo 
frame, so that it may not be readily seen by any one who 
might be tempted to pick up the kite. The boys tie a piece 
of sulphur paper on the string of such a kite, which they 
light before sending up, so that when the kite is in the air 
the string will be burnt through and the kite itself blown 
away. 

It is evident that the kite is, in this instance, treated as a 

scapegoat," the goat of the Hebrews being replaced by a 
bird. In Japan, kites are called * * octopus, " " paper-hawk, 

paper-owl," etc.; and in Korea the rectangular kites are 
provided at each of the lower angles with triangular pieces 
of white paper called the '' crow's foot," and near the upper 
border is a disc of coloured paper, which probably is the 
vestige of an antecedent bird's face (Fig. 36, No. i). All 
classes fly kites, from the king downwards. Women some- 



KITES 191 

times fly kites from their yards, but it is said that any one 
can tell when a kite is flown by a woman. 

In Japan the season for kite-flying greatly varies ; in gen- 
eral it appears to depend upon the prevailing winds. At 
Tokyo it begins on the first day of the New Year, and kites 
are never flown at any other season. On the other hand, 
at Nagasaki, kites are not flown in the first month, but the 
festivals for kite-flying are the 3d, lOth, 15th, and 25th of 
the third month, the 3d being the occasion of a " religious 
festival of dolls" (literally of ** chickens, " or "young 
birds "). 

On the 5th of the fifth month is the boys' festival. 
Streamers and small flags are displayed, and a large coloured 
carp of cloth or paper. This fish is respected, as it reso- 
lutely overcomes all the difficulties it encounters in its pass- 
age up the streams of the country, even ascending waterfalls ; 
thus it is emblematic of what it is hoped will be the career 
of the boys. Models of helmets and warriors are also ex- 
hibited as expressions of the hope that boys may become 
great men. There is a distinct association of ideas between 
long flags and kites. The same day in other parts of Japan 
is an especial occasion for kite-flying. In the province of 
Suruga all the boys who can afford it have a kite on this 
day. It is considered very unlucky for a boy to lose his 
kite ; should this happen, it is customary for search parties 
to follow the lost kite even for a distance of twenty miles, 
and those who bring it back are rewarded with presents of 
sake. It is recorded that a boy once lost his kite on the 
day of this feast, and a few months later he died. Girls 
never have kites. In this case it appears that the kite is 
regarded as a " life-token," or " external soul," of the boy. 
But this symbolism is limited to certain occasions and 
places. In Nagasaki, when a kite escapes, no special effort 
is made to recover it. 



192 THE STUDY OF MAN 

The middle and upper classes in China indulge in the 
pastime in a desultory way; it is not with them a national 
sport, as with the Japanese and with the natives of the 
countries south of China/ (The Koreans say that the Chinese 
do not know how to fly kites, and that when a Chinaman 
grows tired he will tie the string on to a tree and lie down 
and watch it/ 

In Hong-Kong the kite-flying season is the end of sum- 
mer; but in some parts of China the ninth day of the ninth 
month has been from ancient times the great kite-flying 
festival, when paper birds and bizarre monsters flit, swoop, 
and hover in multitudes in the bright sunshine (Fig. 36, 
No. 2). 

In the mountains of the province of Canton kites are flown 
in gangs. 

"'The flier dismisses a leash of three, united by three lines of 
a few feet in length. At the junction of the three ends he at- 
taches a single line, which is dismissed a few feet farther in the 
air. Then raising another separate leash of three — similar in 
arrangement to the first — he ties the joined ends of the second 
leash to his main single line, and dismisses the second trio, the 
first trio being in the air beyond and above the second. He re- 
peats the operation as many times as his stock of kites and his 
stock of patience will allow. He heedfuUy chooses kites which 
have been proven sidewise fliers, so that they may not foul each 
other; if a fresher wind attacks his exhibit, his painstaking is 
ineffective; they will whirl into a confusion of entanglement 
which would exasperate any but a Chinaman." ' 

To a very large extent kite-flying in China and Japan is 
now a simple amusement ; but this is what one constantly 
finds in the history of ancient ceremonial customs. Mr. 

^ G. T. Woglom, Parakifes, p. 9. 
^ S. Culin, Korean Games, p. 12, 
^ G. T. Woglom, Parakites, p. 9. 



KITES 193 

Woglom informs us that the Japanese have their kite-clubs 
with quite large membership rolls. One prominent club, 
the Shiyen Kwai, holds assemblies annually in January for 
consultation and to decide competitively upon new designs. 
Prizes for beauty of design and decoration, and for perfec- 
tion in build and accuracy in flight, are competed for at the 
meetings, which are protracted for several days. The club 
meetings are held in Tokyo, and the flights are held in the 
suburbs. 

JThe ** Festival of the Cherry-Bloom " is a season for 
national sport. Old men, up to eighty years of age, after 
their tiring efforts in raising their pets into the heavens, and 
too feeble to stand continuously, are attended by servants 
with chairs. When travelling through a sparsely inhabited 
section, the rider will see an ancient, mummy-like Japanese 
sitting by the roadside, perhaps upon a bamboo-pole sup- 
port, contentedly flying and watching his kite hour after 
hour. Nowadays in Japan, the kite-flying by both adults 
and children is practised outside the cities ; the police regu- 
lations forbid it in the narrow city streets. 

One exciting form of the sport is known as kite-fighting. 
The strings, for a portion of their length, are covered with 
powdered glass, or sharp-edged, curved pieces of glass are 
fastened to the tails of the kites, the object being to cut the 
string of an opponent's kite by a sawing motion of the 
string of your own kite whilst both are flying. It has been 
stated that kite-cutting did not originate in China, but that 
it was brought from India. A description of this skilful 
pastime is given by Woglom in Parakites.^ 

In Siam each mandarin has his special form of kite with a 
distinctive colour. The king, also, is said to have a mag- 
nificently decorated kite, which is flown at sunset and kept 
flying all night by mandarins of the first rank. It is with- 

1 Pp. 6, 8, 9. 

«3 



194 THE STUDY OF MAN 

drawn at sunrise/ Here again there must be a symbolic or 
magical significance for this curious custom. 

Not only in Further India, but in India itself, on the one 
hand, and in the Malay region to the south, is kite-flying 
practised. It is very prevalent in Java. The several Jav- 
anese communities have each their peculiar kinds of kites, 
and they hold contests to prove superiority of manufacture 
or skill in manipulation. The old form of English kite was 
a Javanese pattern. Woglom says that the Javanese kites 
are seldom decorated, except with dirt. The Javanese, 
more generally than the Japanese, gamble on the results of 
kite competitions and kite battles. They fly them to heights 
of 700 to 1200 feet for display. 

Dr. Codrington "^ informs us that in Melanesia kites are 
used as toys in the Banks Islands, and in the New Hebrides 
they are made and flown at the season when the gardens are 
being cleared for planting. The kite is steadied by a long 
reed tail, and a good one will fly and hover very well. 

In Lepers* Island the kite is called an ** eagle," and the 
following song is sung when flying one: 

*^*Jwind! wherever you may abide, 
Wherever you may abide, Wind! come hither; 
Pray take my eagle away from me afar. 
E-u! E-u! Wind! blow strong and steady, 
Blow and come forth, O Wind! " 

But the kite is put to a more utilitarian use in the Solomon 
Islands and Santa Cruz/ Here it is flown from a canoe, and 
from it hangs a tangle of spiders* web or of fibre, which it 
drags along the surface of the water and in which fish with 
long slender under-jaws become entangled (Fig. 36, No. 4). 

' F. Dillaye, Les Jeux de la Jeunesse, 1885, p. 39, 

2 R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians : Studies in their Anthropology and 
Folk-Lore, 1891, pp. 342, 336. ^ Loc. cii., p. 318. 



KITES 195 

The Fijians know of the kite by the Polynesian name of 
Mamimanu, " bird," but apparently they do not fly it/ 

The use of the kite was widely spread in Polynesia, being 
recorded from the Society Islands and as far south as New 
Zealand. Ellis states : " The boys were very fond of the tco, 
or kite, which they raised to a great height. The Tahitian 
kite was different in shape from the kites of the English 
boys. It was made of light native cloth instead of paper, 
and formed in shape according to the fancy of its owner." ' 

In New Zealand 

" the name of the kite is the old term for the hawk. Their figure 
is generally a rough imitation of the bird with its great out-spread 
wings; these kites are frequently made of very large dimensions 
of raupo leaves, a kind of sedge, neatly sewn together and kept 
in shape by a slight framework. The string is most expeditiously 
formed and lengthened at pleasure, being merely the split leaves 
of the flax plant [Phormium tenax]. This is a very favourite 
amusement." ^ 

Dieffenbach says: *' The kite is of triangular form, and is 
very neatly made of the light leaves of a sedge ; its ascent is 
accompanied with some saying or song, such as the He 
karakia pakau. It is a sign of peace when it is seen flying 
near a village." * Dieffenbach gives the words of this song, 
but unfortunately it is not translated. Tregear* says that 
the kite kaJm (hawk), or pakait (wing), is made from the 
leaves of the raiipo (Typha angustifolia). 

There were three kinds of kites in the remote Hervey Is- 
lands, which were either egg-shaped, club-shaped, or bird- 

' Seemann, Viti, p. 45. 

^ W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i., 2d ed., 1831, p. 228. 
' R. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui ; or. New Zealand audits Inhabitants, 1855, 
p. 172. 

* E. Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, ii., 1843, p. 31. 
' E. Tregear, y^cwrw. A nth. Inst., xix., p. 115. 



196 THE STUDY OF MAN 

shaped. As the latter were more difficult to make, they 
were scarce and justly admired by the childish old men who 
delighted to fly them on the hill-tops of Mangaia. Besides 
a terminal bunch of feathers, the long tail of these kites was 
decorated respectively with four, six, or three bunches of 
yellow // leaves. The four bunches of the egg-like kite 
represent a constellation called the ** Twins and their 
parents " [Piriereua 7na)^ about which an interesting myth 
is given by the Rev. Dr. Wyatt Gill.^ The only children 
of Potiki were twins, a girl named Piri-ere-ua, or ** Insepar- 
able," and a boy. Their mother, Tarakorekore, was a great 
scold and gave them no peace. On one occasion when their 
mother would not give them some fish they ran away and 
leaped up into the sky, where they were followed by their 
parents, who continually chase but can never overtake them. 

SONG OF THE TWINS. 

/^Wherefore fled the children of Tarakorekore ? 
Anger at the cooked fish of Potiki. 
They stealthily rose, and ran and fled for ever. 

Alas! that a mother should thus ill-treat her children. 
Such was not my [the father's] wish; and when I intercede, 
She will not relent. 

She thrashes them — is always at it. 

If one sleeps at Karang or elsewhere, 

Still there is no peace — only threats and blows. 

The six bunches denote the Pleiades; this beautiful con- 
stellation was of extreme importance in heathenism, as its 
appearance at sunset on the eastern horizon determined the 
commencement of the new year, which is about the middle 
of December. Dr. Gill gives " the mythical account of the 
origin of the group. The three bunches represent ** The 

' Myths and Songs, p. 40. ^ Loc. cit., p. 43. 



KITES 197 

Three " {Tati-iorii), that is, the three bright stars forming 
Orion's Belt. The tapa of which the kites were made was 
decorated with devices appropriate to the tribe of the maker. 
A tail with six bunches of leaves was about twenty fathoms 
(one hundred and twenty feet) in length. 

The origin of kite-flying is thus accounted for. The god 
Tane, the Giver of food, once challenged his eldest brother 
Rongo, the Resounder, whose home is in the shades, to a 
kite-flying match. But the issue of this trial of skill was 
the utter discomfiture of Tane by Rongo, who had secretly 
provided himself with an enormous quantity of string. This 
contest is the subject of a poem composed by Koroa about 

1814 A.D.' 

A KITE SONG. 

Call for the dance to lead off . 

/The hill-top Atiu is covered with kites, 
Pets of Raka who rules o'er the winds. 
Solo. Dance away! 
Go on! 
Chorus. See, yon hill-top Atiu covered with kites — 
Pets of Raka, god of the winds. 
Solo. Aye. 
Chorus. I am a bird "^ of beautiful plumage. 

Solo. Cleave, then, the dark clouds. 
Chorus. Take care lest Tautiti gain the day. 
Solo. Once Tane and Rongo tried their skill, 

With divine kites in spirit-land. 
Solo. Who was beaten ? 
Chorus. Tane; for his string fell short. 

Solo. Two thousand fathoms of string! 
Chorus. Yes; 't was Ron go's, 

Whose kite touched the edge of the sky. 

* Myths and Songs, p. 123, 2 j g^ ^ Y\\.t. 



198 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Thus mortals have acquired this agreeable pastime, the 
condition of each game being that the first kite that mounts 
the sky should be sacred to and should bear the name of 
Rongo, the divine patron of the art. The names of all sub- 
sequent kites were indifferent. 

Children's kites were, and still are, extemporised out of 
the leaves of the gigantic chestnut tree. Sometimes one 
sees a boy — but it is no longer, as in the olden time, the 
grandfathers — flying a properly made kite. 

Elsewhere ^ Dr. Gill gives a Mangaian legend about kites 
which is about three hundred and sixty years old, and with 
it ** The Song of the Twin Kites." 

Kites are said, as I have previously mentioned, to have 
been invented by the Chinese General, Han-Sin, about 200 
B.C. There is no reason to disbelieve that Han-Sin em- 
ployed kites for the purpose stated, but the undoubted 
religious character of kite-flying in so many places suggests 
rather that this is not at all likely to have been the origin 
of the custom. 

Probably we shall never know how the kite first originated 
— it may have been independently invented in several places, 
but this is not by any means certain. We Europeans cer- 
tainly learnt the art of kite-flying from South or Eastern 
Asia.' 

The divine origin of kites in spirit-land, according to the 
ancient Mangaian myth, points to its having been an ances- 
tral custom, and as kite-flying, accompanied with the singing 
of mythical chants, appears to be widely spread in the 
Pacific, we may safely regard the custom as not having 
various independent centres of origin in Oceania, but as 

' W. Wyatt Gill, From Darkness to Light in Polynesia^ with Illustrative 
Clan Songs, London, 1849, p. 39. Cf. also Life in the Southern Isles, by the 
same author, p. 64. 

^ E. B. Tylor, "Remarks on the Geographical Distribution of Games," 
yourn. Anth. Inst., ix., 1879, p. 23. 



KITES 199 

having been brought by the Oceanic peoples in their wan- 
derings from the Malay Archipelago. Dr. Gill believes that 
the Polynesians first arrived in the Hervey Islands some two 
or three hundred years ago, and that their swarming from 
Savai'i took place some five or six centuries ago.' How and 
when their ancestors got to the Samoan group is still very 
problematical. An additional argument in favour of the 
natives of the Hervey group bringing their kites with them 
is found in the " Plan of the Winds" as handed down by the 
ancient priests, which, with slight variations, is known from 
many other of the Oceanic groups. The number of wind- 
holes in this plan exactly corresponds with the points of the 
mariner's compass. In the olden tirnes great stress was 
laid on this knowledge for the purpose of fishing, and espe- 
cially for the long sea voyages which these adventurous 
navigators undertook from group to group, ^he Chinese 
are credited with having invented the mariner's compass 
long anterior to the Christian era. I should not be surprised 
if, ultimately, it was found to be the case that the compass, 
with certain other elements of Chinese culture, was brought 
to that country by a maritime people who were early merged 
into the general population of that mixed people, and who 
have subsequently been forgotten. It was known to the 
Arabs in mediaeval times, and from them, through the 
crusaders, the knowledge spread over Europe. As Dr. Gill 
points out,^ the absence of iron throughout Polynesia would 
easily account for the loss of the magnet, but the plan of 
the card was perpetuated. 

Thus once more our attention is directed towards Eastern 
Asia, not only as the headquarters, but also as the place of 
origin, of the kite. It may yet be shown that it actually 
originated among the Indonesian stock before the Polyne- 
sians had swarmed off from the so-called Malay Archipelago 

^ Myths and Songs, p. 167. ^ Ibid., p. 319. 



200 THE STUDY OF MAN 

to found new homes in Oceania. There are anthropologists 
who claim a southern origin for the fine type of the Japan- 
ese ; possibly these adventurous and skilful seamen, like the 
Norsemen of Northern Europe, may have formed an aristo- 
cracy among the agricultural and settled peoples of Japan 
and Korea, and brought with them their social organisation 
and a higher culture. If this be so, it is not improbable 
that kite-flying was a religious exercise of these people, and 
the kite may have been a symbol of the soul or spirit of man. 

If we grant, and there is to my mind very good reason for 
so doing, that the kite was a religious symbol of the primi- 
tive Indonesian race, we may fairly go one step further and 
suggest that the kite itself is merely the liberated sail of a 
canoe. Amongst a seafaring folk this accident must often 
arise, and the excitement of hauling down a sail that had 
blown away might very well lead to the process being in- 
tentionally repeated on a small scale. 

It is tempting to imagine that as the sails of a canoe are 
virtually the life of a canoe — that is, the source of its move- 
ment, the loss of which leaves behind it an inert log at the 
mercy of the elements — so the kite by analogy may have 
come to be regarded as the ' * external soul " or " life-token 
of the owner. For an elucidation of the remarkable belief 
that the soul can be located in an extraneous object far 
removed from the body, the reader is referred to the con- 
cluding part of Dr. Frazer's monumental work. The Golden 
Boiigh.^ Mr. Hartland, in his great study of the Legend of 
Perseus, deals fully with the life-token ; he is of opinion that 
we are " justified in treating the life-token and the external 
soul as almost always one and the same thing in belief and 
custom " (p. 30)." Granting the truth of the statement that 

^ J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, a Study in Comparative Religion, 1890, 
ii., p. 296. 

^ E. Sidney Hartland, The Legend of Perseus, a Study of Tradition in Story, 
Custom, and Belief , 1895, ii., pp. 1-54. 



KITES 201 

the King of Siam's kite is flown at night by a trusted man- 
darin, the fact would bear the interpretation that during the 
hours of darkness and danger the royal soul was peacefully 
soaring in the calm heavens, far removed from mundane 
risks. 

Problems such as these, which are suggested by the com- 
parative study of toys, have in themselves those very dangers 
which beset the kites themselves. The string which binds 
them to the solid earth may snap, and they may be lost in 
the clouds, or they may fall, as it were, lifeless to the ground. 



CHAPTER IX 
TOYS AND GAMES: TOPS AND THE TUG-OE-WAR 

TOPS 

WE have seen that the kite has been introduced into 
Europe from Eastern Asia, but Schlegel believes 
that the debt has not been all on one side, as, according to 
him, the West has repaid in the top\its debt to the East for 
the kite. 

There are many kinds of tops, but they can be resolved 
into a few groups: the whipping-top; the top turned by a 
string wound round the upper end as in the humming-top, 
in which case there is usually a detachable handle, or by the 
string enwrapping the lower end as in the usual peg-tops; 
and lastly the top, or teetotum, spun by being twisted by 
the hands or fingers. 

Every spring, tops appear in our streets with the regularity 
of the seasonal revivals of Dame Nature herself. 

" Tops are in, spin 'em agin; 
Tops are out, smuggin' about," 

cried the ragamuffins in Hone's time,^ and so they still do. 
The last phrase has reference to an unwritten code of boy- 
life, that confiscation (** smugging ") of tops is allowable 
when they are " out." 

' W. Hone, The Every-Day Book, i., 1824 (February 15), p. 253. 

202 



TOPS 203 

Nares ' has collected several references which show that 
tops were at one time owned by the parish or town. In 
Twelfth NigJit"^ we read : "(He 's a coward and coystril, that 
will not drink to my niece, till his brains turn o' the toe like 
the parish top." 

Beaumont and Fletcher refer more than once to this 
strange civic toy. 

•\I '11 hazard 
My life upon it, that a boy of twelve 
Should scourge him hither like a parish top, 
And make him dance before you." ^ 

" And dances like a town-top, and reels and hobbles." * 

Sir W. Blackstone asserts, also, that to " sleep like a town- 
top ' ' was proverbial. Stevens, in his Notes on Shakespeare^ 
states that "this is one of the customs now laid aside : a 
large top was formerly kept in every village, to be whipt in 
frosty weather, that the peasants might be kept warm by 
exercise and out of mischief while they could not work. ' ' It 
is very improbable that this is the real signification of the 
curious custom of having a village top. Judging from what 
we know of other instances of village recreations, it is prob- 
able that there is something behind this which has not yet 
been elucidated. 

Hone ^ refers to a top being used in the ritual of the burial 
of Alleluia in one of the churches in Paris. "According to 
a story (whether true or false) in one of the churches of 
Paris, a choir boy used to whip a top marked with Alleluia, 
written in gold letters, from one end of the choir to the other. 

^ R. Nares, Glossary, '* Parish Top." 

''■ Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act i.. Scene 3. 

^ Beaumont and Fletcher, Thiery-y and Theod., Act ii., Scene 4. 

* Ibid., Night Walker, Act i., Scene 4. 

^ W. Hone, The Every-Day Book, i., 1824 (February 2), p. 199. 



204 ^^^ STUDY OF MAN 

This does not seem to be very likely, but strange customs 
often persist to an unexpected and almost inexplicable 
extent, and, if it be true, we may find in this and analogous 
customs some clues which may throw light upon the town 
tops. 

The whipping-top has an ancient pedigree in Europe. In 
a work of the thirteenth century, Le Miracle de Sainct-LoySy 
the whipping-top {sabot) is mentioned ' ; and it is figured in 
the marginal paintings of English MSS. of the fourteenth 
century. * 

(Pliny refers to a top identical with the modern one, and 
specimens of such tops have been recovered from the ruins 
of Pompeii, and are still exhibited in the Museum of Naples. 
There are, as a matter of fact, several allusions in Latin and 
Greek authors to the whipping-top. The whipping-top is 
mentioned in an old MS. dating to about 500 B.C. lA 
stranger of Atarne consulted Pittacus of Mitylene, one of 
the Seven Sages of Greece (651-569 B.C.), concerning a 
wife. The question was whether he should take a certain 
girl in his own rank of life, who had a fortune equal to his 
own, or a damsel of higher status and with more money. 
The sage told him to go to a group of boys who were play- 
ing at whipping-tops in the midst of a wide cross-road. As 
he approached them he heard one of the boys say to his 
fellow, " Whip the nearest one," and he accepted this as 
an oracle. 

The oldest record is the discovery of Dr. Schliemann of 
terra-cotta tops in the so-called Third City of Troy, and at 
the present day the boys of Asia Minor still spin tops with 
whips. 

When the traveller, Palgrave, was at Riadh, the capital 

^ F. Dillaye, Les Jeux de la yeunesse, Paris, 1885, p. igi, 
^ J. Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England^ iSoi, book 
iv., chap, iv., p. 288. 



TOPS 205 

of Wahabees in Central Arabia, he saw a boy spin a top on 
his left hand; he then took it on the forefinger of his right 
hand, which he held at full length above his head, and re- 
peated the following formula : 

"iNot by my strength, nor cleverness, but by the strength of 
God and by the cleverness of God." 

Jhe whipping-top is known in the far East. Stewart 
Culin ' in his beautifully illustrated work on Korean Games 
gives a plate of a couple of boys playing on the ice. The 
top is made of hard wood with an iron point ; it is played 
with in winter, and usually spun on the frozen ground. The 
Koreans also share the humming-top with the Japanese, 
who call it ** thunder-top." 

The learned Chinese scholar, Gustav von Schlegel, of 
Leiden, many years ago^ also distinguished between the 
various kinds of tops of Eastern Asia; the ordinary small 
top, driven with the whip {Taitzknopfle , %i. e., " dance- 
button," is its name on the Neckar), the humming-top, 
the whistling-top which is thrown, and the top turned round 
with the fingers, etc. The first of these, according to 
Schlegel, spread from Europe through Java to Japan and 
Korea. Schlegel never saw it in China, nor is it mentioned 
in the older Chinese works. 

The Japanese, according to Dr. R. Andree in an erudite 
paper on " The Game of Tops and its Distribution " Mn a 
recent number of Globus, call the different sorts of top tok- 
lok. This word is not known in China, and in the old Jap- 
anese encyclopaedias the name is tolo, which is the Dutch 

' Stewart Culin, Korean Games : with Notes on the Corresponding Games of 
China and yapan, Philadelphia, 1895. 

^ Chinesiche Brauche und Spiele in Europa, Dissertation, Jena, 1869. 

2 R. Andree, "Das Kreiselspielen und seine Verbreitung," Globus, Ixix., 
1896, p. 371. 



206 THE STUDY OF MAN 

tol which, together with its name, was introduced, says 
Schlegel, into Japan from Java. The Korean and Japanese 
humming-top corresponds exactly with that used in Java, 
and they are all made of bamboo. Culin figures a large 
number of Japanese tops of various kinds, many of which 
are very ingenious. 

From Japan this top passed across to China, where in 
Amoy it is called kan-lok, which has the same signification 
as the Japanese tolo. The large humming-top is called in 
Amoy " earth-thunder," and in Canton *' noisy goose." 
Thus the Bromtoloi the Netherlands (the toupie bourdonnante 
of the French) has also wandered afar. 

According to Bastian ^ the game of top is known in Bur- 
mah and Siam. Different kinds of tops are found in Malasia. 
The true humming-top and the whipping-top occur in the 
Malay Peninsula and Archipelago. A humming-top from 
the Straits Settlements in the British Museum is made of a 
section of bamboo, with an oblong opening in the side. 
Mr. C. H. Reaci also describes a Malay top i^gasing) made 
in a lathe, and furnished with an iron peg at the base. It 
differs from the European top in having the string wound 
round the upper part. It was obtained at Selangor, Straits 
Settlements (Fig. 37, No. 6). 

RiedeP found tops among the Uliassern, Serang, Kaisar, 
and Wetar. A simple wooden top driven by a whip was 
found by Dr. Max Weber ^ in the Island of Flores, and a 
spinning-top was collected by Dr. H. O. Forbes in Timor- 
laut. C. H. Read,* who has described this (Fig. 37, No. 



^ Bastian, Reise in Birnia, p. 60 ; Reise in Siajn, p. 324. 

^ Riedel, Sluiken kroeshaarige Rassen, pp. 84, 131, 428, 433. 

^ Max Weber, Ethnographische Notizen titer Flores und Celebes, Leiden» 
1890, pi. v., fig. 12. 

■* C. H. Read, "Stone Spinning-Tops from Torres Straits, New Guinea," 
yourn. Anth. Inst., xvii., p. 85. 




Fig. 37. 
Eastern Tops ; after C. H. Read. 

1, 2. Stone teetotum, or top from Mer (Murray Island), Torres Straits, 3. Wooden spinning- 
top from Timorlaut, Tenimber Islands. 4. Bamboo humming-teetotum or -top, Straits Set- 
tlements. 5. A similar top from Sakayana, Stewart Islands, West Pacific. G. Malay 
peg-top from Sfilangor, Straits Settlements. The scale is between one-third and one-fourth. 

207 



208 THE STUDY OF MAN 

6) and other tops, points out various Malay influences that 
are seen in this island. 

Ling Roth/ in his very valuable compilation on Bornean 
ethnography, records that the Sea-Dyak boys are very fond 
of playing with tops. He figures one on page 104, which is 
a double cone; the string is wound round the upper half, 
and it is evidently spun as a peg-top. The boys play 
games, but, with the exception of the top, the young men 
look upon games as beneath them. 

There are very few recorded instances of tops from 
Oceania. A humming-top (Fig. 37, No. 5) is said to come 
from the Stewart Islands (Sakayana), which lie a little to 
the east of the Solomon Islands in the Western Pacific ; it 
is made of bamboo, and is very similar to the one from the 
Straits Settlements, except that the lateral opening is small 
and of irregular shape. 

Read confesses to having some doubts about the correct- 
ness of this locality, though the specimen came from the 
Godeffroy collection, where they have the best means of 
testing its accuracy. 

Among the Polynesians I have come across two records 
only. 

Hedley ' says: 

" Spinning-tops I found to be a popular amusement on Nuku- 
lailai (Ellice Group, VV. Pacific). Their tops were simply cone 
shells spun on their apices. A game was to spin two shells in a 
wooden dish, out of which, by rotating and colliding, the winner 
would knock the loser. The shells were spun either like a teeto- 
tum between the finger and thumb, or to give greater force one 

' H. Ling Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, 1896, 
i., pp. 103, 104, 367. 

2 C. Hedley, "The Atoll of Funafuti, Ellice Group," Australian Museum, 
Sydney Memoir, iii., 1897. 



TOPS 209 

end was steadied by the finger and thumb of the left hand, while 
the impetus was given by drawing the right forefinger briskly 
across it." 

(The Rev. R. Taylor ' informs us that " the whipping-top 
is played in every part of New Zealand ; the top used is 
more of a cone, and of less diameter than our English one, 
but in other respects it is just the same." Dr. Dieffenbach ' 
merely says: ** A top, called kaiJwra, nicely formed, and 
managed as it is by us, supplies another of their amuse- 
ments." E. Tregear * speaks of a whipping-top with two 
points. 

Dr. Codrington " informs us that tops are made in the 
Solomon Islands of the nut of a palm and a pin of wood, 
the whole visible length of which, between two and three 
inches long, is below the head. To spin the top a doubled 
string is wound round the shaft, and the two ends are pulled 
smartly asunder. A similar top was used in Pitcairn Island 
by the half-breed Tahitian children of the Bounty mutineers. 

Tops are recorded from Netherlands, New Guinea, by De 
Clercq and Schmeltz,^ and they also occur in Torres Straits 
at the opposite side of that island (Fig. 37, Nos. i, 2). 

I have had as many as four men at a time spinning tops 
for me, on the ball of their big toes, on the verandah of my 
house in Murray Island, Torres Straits. These tops, or 
rather teetotums, are made of pieces of a fine-grained vol- 
canic ash, of the shape of a split pea, some four to six inches 
in diameter and pierced with a hole in which a long piece of 
palm wood is inserted. The top is revolved by rolling the 

' Loc. cit., p. 172. 
^ Loc. cit., p. 32. 
^ Journ. Anth. Inst., xix. 

■* R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians, 1891, p. 342. 

* De Clercq en Schmeltz, Ethnogr. Beschri-ving van Nedert.-Nieuw- 
Guinea, 1893, p. 241. 



2IO THE STUDY OF MAN 

stick between the palms of the hands. It may be spun on a 
sHghtly concave fragment of a shell, or on the ball of the 
big toe, for these Papuans sit like a tailor, but bend their 
feet so that the soles face directly upwards. 

^Quite lately Mr. Etheridge * has described and figured a 
humming-top, or rather teetotum, from the Cairns District, 
in North Queensland. The toy is made of a small gourd 
about three inches in diameter; besides the holes for the 
axial stick the gourd is pierced by four holes. The top is 
spun between the palms of the hands on a blanket, or on 
any piece of hard ground, and are often used to amuse child- 
ren. The tops were used before the occupation of this 
part of the country by the English. Mr. Etheridge admits 
there is a bare possibility that they may be a remnant of 
Malay or Papuan influence. It is a significant fact, he adds, 
that the farther we go north of the Australian continent, 
the more apparent is the resemblance between the weapons 
and the implements of the North Australian aborigines to 
those of New Guinea. 

In the recently published account of the Horn Expedition 
to Central Australia, Dr. Stirling says : ^ 

" I also saw them spinning water-worn, round pebbles on the 
bottoms of inverted ' billy-cans,' but I saw none of the beauti- 
fully balanced tops moulded out of clay and provided with a peg, 
which the natives in the north-east of South Australia proper 
(Blanchewater) ^ spin, in competition against one another, on 
some smooth surface such as a piece of tin. At the locality men- 
tioned I saw one, spun by a lubra (woman), remain ' asleep ' for 
four minutes." 

^ R. Etheridge, Junr. , " The Game of Teetotum Practised by Certain Queens- 
land Aborigines," Jotirn. Anth. Inst., xxv., 1896, p. 259. 

^ E. C. Stirling, "Report of the Work on the Horn Scientific Expedition to 
Central Australia," part iv., Aiithropology, i8g6, p. 86. 

^ Lat. 29° 30' S. ; long. 139° 6' ; about. 



TOPS 2 I I 

It is difficult to believe that any Malay influence could 
be felt right in the heart of Australia. 

(According to Andree there are only two records of tops 
from the whole of America. The German traveller Kohl ' 
saw the boys of the Odschibwa (Ojibwa) Indians playing 
with tops made out of nuts and acorns; but it is an open 
question whether this game is, as it were, in the process of 
evolution among these Indians, or whether it has been in- 
troduced by European settlers. The second record is more 
extraordinary, as it is a humming-top which was brought 
one hundred years ago by Vancouver from Nootka Sound, 
North-West America, and therefore before European influ- 
ence had penetrated so far. This top, which is exhibited in 
the British Museum,^ has a handle, through which the string 
passes, just as in those sold in the toy-shops of Europe. 

The complication of a separate perforated handle is cer- 
tainly a noteworthy feature, and it evidently has some rela- 
tion to the whirligigs that Murdoch ^ describes and figures 
(Fig. 374) among the Point Barrow Eskimo. One should 
not rashly surmise that both of these somewhat complicated 
toys have been introduced from a people of higher culture, 
as we find that these same Eskimo make mechanical toys. 
There are many other points about these hyperboreans that 
are of great interest. Murdoch came across only one teeto- 
tum (p. 376, Fig. 375) among the Eskimo ; it was spun with 
the fingers. 

I Dr. Andree did not recall any top from the Negroes of 
Africa; but I find that a " sacred humming-top of the Mas- 
saningas " is figured in page 358 of the English translation 
of Ratzel's The History of Mankind, vol. ii. (1897). 

' J. G. Kohl, Kitschi-Gami, i., p. 119. 
'^ C. H. Read,yc?z^r«. Anth. Inst., xxi., i8gi, p. 108. 

^ J, Murdoch, "Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition," 
Ninth Annual Rep. Bureau Et/inol., Washington, 1887-88, 1892. 



212 THE STUDY OF MAN 

The history of the peg-top is much more scanty. Strutt ^ 
beHeved it to be a modern invention, and thought it " prob- 
ably originated from the te-totums and whirHgigs. 
The usage of the te-totum may be considered as a kind of 
petty gambling." According to M. Dillaye * \\. {la toupie) 
is not mentioned in French documents older than the four- 
teenth century; and M. L. Becq de Fouquieres argues that 
there is no evidence that it was known to classical authors. 
Godwin Austen " saw the children of the Naga Hills spin- 
ning peg-tops with string; the top was made out of a very 
hard wood, and was pointed below. This top may be allied 
to some of the tops of the Malay Archipelago, which are 
certainly a kind of peg-top. 

The story of the wandering of the kite is much more con- 
sistent than is that of the migration of the top. So far as 
the far East is concerned Schlegel has definitely expressed 
his opinion as to the top being a migrant from Europe. 
Once established in Java it could easily travel down the 
Malay Archipelago and be stranded with other flotsam and 
jetsam on the islands which have been washed with the 
wave of Malay culture. 

vlf, for example, the use of tobacco has been taught to 
Malays by the white man and by them transferred to the 
Papuans, so that we found it smoked in the Torres Straits 
before it had been brought directly by European voyagers, 
it is not too far-fetched to assume that the stone teetotum 
may have followed the same route. On the other hand, the 
shape of the Murray Island top is so similar to the heads of 
the disc-shaped stone clubs, that one is tempted to believe 

^ J. Strutt, The Sports aiid Pastimes of the People of England, i8oi, chap, 
iv., sec. vi., p. 228. Strutt says when he was a boy the te-totum had only four 
sides, marked respectively with T. (take all), H. (half of the stake), N. (noth- 
ing), and P. (put down ; that is, a stake equal to that you put down at first). 

^ F. Dillaye, Les yetix de la Jeunesse, Paris, 1885, p. 195. 

^ Lieut, -Col. H. Godwin Austen, Journ. Anth. Inst,, ix., 1879, p. 30. 



TOPS 2 I 3 

that this may have been its origin, especially when one re- 
members that in this island alone, for a district extending 
for some hundreds of miles, is the fine-grained, easily worked 
stone found of which these tops are made. The labour of 
making stone clubs is so very great that there would be no 
inducement to make playthings out of a refractory rock; 
but the ash of this volcanic island evidently appealed to 
some native as being a workable material, and it is also sug- 
gestive that the motion of spinning these tops is similar to 
that employed by these people in making fire by their fire- 
sticks and in drilling holes. 

(The sporadic appearance of the humming-top in North 
Queensland is very remarkable. It really looks as if this 
was an independent invention, especially as Dr. Stirling has 
recorded true tops from Central Australia; but the fact that 
it is a humming-top is rather against this view, as this is a 
complication which is unlikely to arise de novo. A teeto- 
tum, or a simple top, may have been invented more than 
once, but it is highly improbable that a humming-top 
would be invented before a simpler form of type, and we know 
that this kind of top is found in the neighbouring Archipelago. 

The tops of New Zealand again require an explanation, 
as there is no indication whatever of any direct Malay influ- 
ence. The Maories may have brought it with them when 
they migrated to New Zealand, but then we should expect 
to find it more frequently in Polynesia; on the other hand, 
they may have learnt it from the Melanesians, who prob- 
ably formed the earlier population. 

I must confess that I am by no means satisfied that the 
top has had a single centre of diffusion from which it has 
spread to Africa on the one hand, and to North-West 
America, to New Zealand, and to Australia on the other. 
The problem is a very interesting one, but I do not think 
the means for its solution are yet available. 



214 ^^^ STUDY OF MAN 

THE TUG-OF-WAR 

Allusion was made, when noticing the mediaeval town- 
tops, to the fact that village recreations often have a signifi- 
cance which is not apparent at first sight. We will see what 
lies at the back of such an apparently simple sport as the 
tug-of-war. 

At the present time the tug-of-war is merely one event in 
school or other ** sports"; but we find that it has had a 
history worth recording. \In former days at Ludlow the in- 
habitants of Broad Street and Corve Street wards had an 
annual tug-of-war, employing a rope three inches thick and 
thirty-six yards long, with a large knob at each end. The 
rope, which was paid for by the corporation, was given out 
at the window of the Market Hall by the mayor at four 
o'clock on the appointed day, when all business was sus- 
pended and the shops shut. One man stood on another's 
shoulders, and the chimney-sweep's wife on his shoulders. 
These represented the Red Knob ; three others, mounted in 
the same way, representing the Blue Knob. If, during the 
contest, the rope was pulled down Mill Street, the Red 
Knob won, and the knobs were dipped in the River Teme 
in token of victory; but if the Blue Knobs dragged it 
through the Bull Ring, the dipping took place in the River 
Corve. After the rope was won it was taken back to the 
Market Hall and given out again, and if the same side won, 
the contest was ended ; but if the opposite side conquered, 
then the rope was given out a third time, and the victory 
remained with the side that won twice. 

(The rope was then sold, and the money got for it was 
spent in beer, and then fighting and quarrelling commenced. 
These disorderly scenes, and the dangerous accidents result- 
ing, caused this custom to be discontinued in 185 1. 

There are many other examples of contests between two 
wards or two parts of villages or towns, which often take 



THE TUG-OF-WAR 21 5 

the form of a football contest; nominally it is a football 
match, but in reality it is a faction fight. Mr. Gomme, 
from whom I have largely borrowed, has collected several 
instances of such feuds in his Village Cominiinity ,^ and 
points out their significance; for example, the Seneca In- 
dians of North America played a ball game by phratries (or 
clans) the one against the other; and the Greek phratries 
developed the same custom. 

In the North-West Provinces of India a very thick grass 
rope is pulled by the villagers among themselves. The 
party in whose quarter the rope is broken, or by whom the 
rope is pulled out of the hands of their antagonists, are 
the victors, and retain the rope for a year. It is well known 
that the quarters of an Indian village are clan quarters. 
Now, there is reason to believe that some at least of the 
contests in a British village or township are the remnants of 
a really hostile feeling which existed between the inhabitants 
of those districts. 

The reason for this hostility is probably the same both in 
India and in Britain ; it is not so much local rivalry as racial 
or tribal animosity. In two parts of the same manor, as at 
Eling, in Hampshire, or even in the same town, as at Not- 
tingham, the modes of descent of property may vary; on 
one side of a boundary junior right or borough English is 
the custom, while on the other side of the boundary the 
rule of primogeniture is followed. The custom of inherit- 
ance by the youngest son is a very ancient one, and in this 
country dates from long before the practice of making the 
eldest son the heir. In Indian villages we have side by side 
the Dravidian aborigines, who are low castes, and the 
various higher castes, with their increasing purity of Aryan 
blood ; and it may be that in our British villages there is an 

^ G. L. Gomme, The Village Community : with Special Re ference to the Origin 
and Form of its Survivals i?i Britain, 1890, pp, 240-246. 



2l6 THE STUDY OF MAN 

analogous racial or tribal mixture ; thus these parish contests, 
which are recognised and sanctioned by the municipal 
authorities, are the vestigial expression of a very real jeal- 
ousy which had its origin in the very roots of the history of 
our country. 

Side or faction fights are common all over the world. 
The city of Seoul, in Korea, is divided into five districts, 
north, south, east, west, and middle, and every person is 
officially enrolled under one of these directions. This 
distribution of space enters into the whole philosophy of 
existence in this part of the world. 

Immediately after kite-flying time, that is, after the 15th 
of the first month, these side or faction fights take place. 
They are commenced by little boys, who make ropes of 
straw and fight with them. Sides are formed which advance 
and retreat. Bigger boys join, and at last the men are 
drawn into the fray. Stones are then the principal weapons 
employed, and many injuries, and even deaths, result. 

In Japan faction fights, called " Gempei," occur, which 
take their name, like the well-known Guelphs and Ghibel- 
lines, from the famous rival families, Genji and Heike, 

Gempei " being a " portmanteau " word combined from 
Gen and Hei. The side that represents the Genji wear 
their colour, white ; and the other, which represents the 
Heik6, take red. The rival families were located east and 
west, and the sides in these sports may be regarded as as- 
sociated with these directions.' 

, Dr. F. Boas informs us that among the Eskimo the boys 
born in summer fight those born in winter. 

In the first month of the year in South China, village 
fights occur on the open plains; sometimes they are very 
serious affairs.' 

' Culin, Korean Games, p. 63. 

^ Gray, China, i., London, 1878, p. 256. 



THE TUG-OF-WAR 21/ 

Professor Culin, in his valuable Korean Gaines,^ to which 
I have had to refer so often, gives a suggestive clue to the 
origin of the straw-rope contest to which allusion has just 
been made. This is played by any number of boys about 
the 15th of the first month. In the country the entire 
population of districts and villages engage against other dis- 
tricts or villages at this season. It is believed that the 
village that wins will have a good harvest. The rope is of 
straw, two feet in diameter, with its ends divided into 
branches. The men take the main stem, and the w^omen 
the branches. The latter frequently do more than the 
men, as it is customary for them to load their skirts with 
stone on these occasions. The Dictionnaire Core'en Franqais 
defines the rope as a " rope which they pull by the two ends 
to secure abundance." 

The tug-of-war is a common amusement among school- 
boys in Japan under the name of " rope-pulling." Accord- 
ing to The Japanese Months, on the 15th day of the eighth 
month in the old calendar, people turned out to admire the 
full moon, and made offerings to it of dango, a kind of cake 
made of rice, beans, and sugar. The sport known as " tug- 
of-war " afforded amusement on the same evening to the 
boys of rival villages, or to contending parties belonging to 
the same place, grown-up persons sometimes joining in the 
fun. Each side has its own rope, which is of large size, and 
made of rice-straw. There is a loop at each end, and a stick 
is passed through the loop at one end of each rope, so that 
both are pulled at the same time. The contest is concluded 
when one party is pulled over the dividing-line, or till the 
ropes break. This practice is now a thing of the past. It 
is significant that the period from the middle of July to the 
middle of August is an anxious period for the farmers, 

' Stewart Culin, Korean Games : with Notes on the Corresponding Games of 
China and Japan, Philadelphia, 1895, p. 35. 



2l8 THE STUDY OF MAN 

whose rice-plants are in danger of perishing from lack of 
water should no rain fall for several consecutive days. 

The tug-of-war thus resolves itself in Korea and Japan 
into a magic ceremony to ensure a good harvest. Probably 
the straw rope typifies the harvest, and the pulling it over 
a boundary would ensure a fruitful harvest for the winning 
side. This is quite in accordance with the working of the 
savage mind, as innumerable examples from what is known 
as sympathetic magic will testify. It is interesting to note 
that in Korea itself the ceremony has broken down, and is 
degraded in Seoul into faction fights; but, true to their 
origin, they begin with straw ropes; and, further, it is note- 
worthy that the small boys retain the older fashion — they 
are more true to the traditional custom. Further research 
will show whether the contests in our villages and towns are 
merely racial or tribal in origin, or whether there may not 
be some harvest ritual behind them. 



CHAPTER X 

THE BULL-ROARER 

JN some parts of the British Islands boys occasionally play 
with a toy which consists of a thin slat of wood tied to 
the end of a long piece of string, the rapid whirling of which 
results in a noise that is expressed in the various names 
given to this simple instrument. Prof. E. B. Tylor informs 
me that the name of " bull-roarer " was first introduced into 
anthropological literature by the Rev. Lorimer Fison/ who 
compares the Australian turndiln to '* the wooden toy which 
I remember to have made as a boy, called a ' bull-roarer,' 
and this term has since been universally adopted as the 
technical name for the implement. 

For some years past I have collected all the specimens 
and information I could about this interesting object. I 
have one specimen made by a boy at Balham in Surrey 
(London, S.W.); it is 7| inches in length and i^^ inches in 
breadth (187 mm. by 30 mm.).^ The ends are square, and it 
is serrated along each side. I have heard of it in Essex, but 
have not seen a specimen. 

In West Suffolk it is called a " hummer," and is slightly 
notched; I have been told that in East Suffolk the edges 

^ Fison and Hovvitt, Kaniilaroi and Kurnai, 1880, p. 267. Prof. E. B. 
Tylor in his review of this book in The Academy, April 9, 18S1, p, 265, gives 
■" whizzer" as an alternative name. 

" Subsequently I give, within parentheses, the English measurements, fol- 
lowed by the same converted into the metric system. 

219 



220 THE STUDY OF MAN 

were sometimes plain. I have several specimens from dif- 
ferent parts of Norfolk, where it is called " humming buz- 
zer," or simply " buzzer " (loj- x ij, \\\ x \\, ii|- x if; 
257 X 38, 282 X 47, 292 X 35). The ends are usually square, 
but the string end is rounded in the last one; the sides may 
be serrated or simply notched along both surfaces of each 
side, the notches being more or less deep. One specimen 
" buzz " from Mid-Norfolk is rounded at the string end and 
pointed at the other, and with only five notches along each 
side {j\ X 2-^ ; 1 84 x 54). I have been informed that in Cam- 
bridgeshire it was called a " bull," and has plain edges. In 
Bedfordshire its name is " buzzer." The Lincolnshire 
variety, " swish," is quadrangular, like the ordinary Nor- 
folk form, and notched. I have heard of its occurrence in 
the East Riding of Yorkshire, but have no details. In East 
Derbyshire it is known as a " bummer " or " buzzer." My 
Derbyshire specimen is plano-convex, the string end is 
square, and the other rounded. In nearly every specimen 
the string passes through a hole near one end ; but in this 
example the string is tied in a nick in each side near one 
end, and the opposite half and the free end are alone serrated 
(10-^ X i-J; 257 X 47). A model of a Warwickshire type has 
the ends practically square, but the sides are slightly con- 
cave (6 X I j at each end and i ^ in the middle ; 1 52 x 44 and 
38). Another model, also called " bummer," said to be 
used in Warwickshire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire, has 
square ends, and the sides are concave near the string end, 
and there are four pairs of oblique grooves in the middle 
(7^ X i^ and I in the narrow part ; 190 x 38 and 25). I must 
confess that I am not satisfied about these last two imple- 
ments. I have one or two others that were given me by 
the same friend which vary considerably in form, and had 
no localities given with them. I reserve these for the 
present, as I have my doubts about them. 




Fig. 38. 
Bull-Roarers from the British Islands. 
1. Ballycastle, County Antrim. 2. Wanvickshire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire. 3. Warwick- 
shire. 4 Montgomeryshire. 5. Derbyshire. G, 7, 8. Norfolk. 9. Balham (Surrey). 



22 1 



222 THE STUDY OF MAN 

The Rev. Elias Owen, of Oswestry, kindly had a" roarer " 
made for me as they were used sixty years ago in Mont- 
gomeryshire in Wales. Here again we have the East Anglian 
pattern, but with the ends differently finished off. Although 
there is a large hole at one end, strangely enough the string 
is tied through a small hole at the other extremity {\2\ x 2\ ; 
311 X64). (Fig. 38, No. 4.) 

I have been told that the bull-roarer was known as a 
thunder-spell " ' in some parts of Scotland, and in Aber- 
deen as a "thunder-bolt." Professor Tylor also records it 
from Scotland.^ My friend, Mrs. Gomme, has very kindly 
allowed me to copy the following from the second volurne 
of her Traditional Gaines of England, Scotland, and Ireland 
(1898, p. 291): 

" Thun er-SpelL — A thin lath of wood, about six inches long 
and three or four inches broad, is taken and rounded at one end. 
A hole is bored in that end, and in the hole is tied a piece of 
cord between two and three yards long. It is then rapidly swung 
round, so as to produce a buzzing sound. The more rapidly it 
is swung the louder is the noise. It was believed that the use of 
this instrument during a thunder-storm saved one from being 
struck with ' the thun'er-bolt.' I [Dr. Gregor] have used it with 
this intention (Keith). In other places it is used merely to make 
a noise. It is commonly deeply notched all round the edges to 
increase the noise. 

^ Since the above was in type, Mr, W. S. Laverock, of the Liverpool Mu- 
seum, has informed me that " thunner spells" are quite common in Aberdeen- 
shire and Kincardineshire ; they were made by farm-servants and villagers. 
They are usually flat laths, twelve to fifteen inches in length and two and a half 
to three inches wide ; the perforated end was rounded, and the notching varied 
in amount according to the taste and patience of the maker. They were used 
with a short string. Mr. Laverock does not know whether the word "spell" 
means, in this connection, a charm, or the Scottish term for a shaving, the 
English "spill." 

•^ yonm. Anth. Inst., xix., p, 163. 



THE BULL-ROARER , 223 

*i Some years ago a herd-boy was observed making one in a 
farm kitchen (Udny). It was discovered that when he was sent 
to bring the cows from the fields to the farmyard to be milked, 
he used it to frighten them, and they ran frantically to their 
stalls. The noise made the animals dread the bot-fly or * cleg.* 
This torment makes them throw their tails up, and rush with fury 
through the fields or to the byres to shelter themselves from its 
attacks. A formula to effect the same purpose, and which I have 
many and many a time used when herding, was: Cock tail! cock 
tail ! cock tail ! Bizz-zz-zz ! Bizz-zz-zz! — Keith (Rev. W. 
Gregor). 

" Dr. Gregor secured one of these that was in use in Pitsligo 
and sent it to the Pit-Rivers Museum at Oxford, where it now 
lies, 

" They are still occasionally to be met with in country districts, 
but are used simply for the purpose of making a noise." 

In her first volume, under the title of " Bummers," Mrs. 
Gomme writes: 

** A play of children. ' Bummers ' — a thin piece of wood 
swung round by a cord {Blackwood's Magazine, Aug., 182 1, p. 
35). Jamieson says the word is evidently denominated from the 
booming sound produced " (p. 51). 

I have only two notices of the bull-roarer from Ireland — 
one from the town and county of Cork, the other from Bally- 
castle, County Antrim, where the Rev. J. P. Barnes kindly 
gave me a specimen, which is a long, narrow lath, with 
straight, smooth sides; the string end is square, but the op- 
posite end is rudely pointed (i3f x i ; 350 x 25). (Fig. 38, 
No. I.) Its use is very local, but I am informed that the 
schoolboys in Coleraine often make them. Mr. Barnes 
writes: 

" From inquiry made, I come to the conclusion that the * Bull- 
roarer ' (its local name) is not indigenous, but an importation. 



224 THE STUDY OF MAN 

The boy who gave me this says he got the idea from his father, 
who is a coastguard; his father once tied a string to a piece of 
wood lying near the fireside, and began to twirl it round for the 
children's amusement, saying, ' That 's what I have seen niggers 
do in the West Indies.' " 

This last remark is very suggestive. The form is not like 
that which I have collected in England, and certainly does 
more resemble the (9r<?-stick of West Africa (Fig. 39). It 
would be a strange circumstance — but not more strange than 
others that we have already studied — if the dreaded god of 
vengeance of West Africa should become the plaything of a 
boy in the north of Ireland.' 

Dr. Schmeltz, the Director of the Ethnographical Museum 
at Leiden, has written a laborious monograph on the bull- 
roarer. He commences by describing a child's toy well 
known in Germany as the WaldteiifeL It is a small card- 
board cylinder, open at one end and closed at the other; to 
the middle of the drum is fastened a horsehair, the other 
end of which is tied to a piece of wood. When the imple- 
ment is swung round it makes a horrible sound. I have a 
perfectly similar toy that was bought in the streets of Cam- 
bridge, except that a piece of fibre replaces the horsehair; 
this has a loop at the unattached end, which revolves loosely 
in a notch at the end of a short piece of wood. The wood 
at this spot is coated with resin, so as to produce a grating 
sound ; this is conducted along the fibre, and the cylinder 
acts as a resonator. I have been unable to discover the 
English name for the " Devil of the woods." My friend, 

' Since the above was in type I have been informed that "boomers" are in 
common use among boys in County Down. They are notched in various ways, 
sometimes on one side only ; they appear, in fact, to be of very diverse form. 
Those given to me were made for me, and may not represent the common form 
of bull-roarer in the north-east corner of Ireland. My informant stated that 
once when, as a boy, he was playing with a " boomer" an old country woman 
said it was a " sacred " thing. It would be worth while to follow up this clue. 



THE BULL-ROARER 22 S 

Director Schmeltz, suggests a connection between this toy 
and the bull-roarer. I quite fail to see how the simple slat 
of wood could develop into the more complicated cylinder. 
All one can say is that they both make a disagreeable sound. 
As to the origin and significance of the Waldteiifel, nothing 
whatever is known, and we have no evidence before us to 
connect this toy with any magical or religious rite.' 

An analogous implement to the bull-roarer is that which 
is called in America the "buzz." It usually consists of a 
small, flat, rectangular piece of wood, in which two holes 
are pierced, and through these a long, continuous piece of 
string is passed. The loops of the string are held in the two 
hands, and the wood is swung round so as to twist the string. 
The hands are strongly and steadily drawn apart, which 
causes the wood to revolve at a rapid rate, and to produce 
a buzzing sound; if properly managed the momentum is so 
great that the string twists itself up again, and so on in- 
definitely. 

Culin ^ informs us that there are two kinds in Korea. 
The first is a simple circular card with two holes through 
which the cords are passed ; the other is a more compli- 
cated arrangement. The first form occurs in China and 
Japan. Murdoch describes and figures one from the Point 
Barrow Eskimo,^ and Culin says the "buzz " is to be found 
widely distributed among the Indians of North America. 

It is an occasional plaything in England, but I do not 
know its history. Mr. Thomas Drew informs me that on a 
summer's evening fifty years ago the young weavers of Bel- 
fast were fond of playing with the *' bummer." It was an 
oblong piece of wood, pierced with two holes, and serrated 
all round. 

^J. D. E. Schmeltz, "Das Schwirrholz," Verh. des Vereins fiir iraturw. 
U titer haJtung zu Hamburg, ix., 1896, p. g2. ^ Korean Games, p. 22. 

^ Ninth Annual Rep. Bureau of Ethnol., p. 378. 
IS 



226 THE STUDY OF MAN 

This toy has not yet been connected with any ceremonial 
usage. 

A German friend has informed me that he has seen the 
bull-roarer in the Black Forest, where it is known as Schldgel ; 
and I have also heard that it is sometimes seen in fairs at 
Basel in Switzerland. Tylor {Academy, April 9, 1881, p. 
265) says it is called Brummer in Germany. In West Prus- 
sia, near Marienwerder, the true bull-roarer (Schwirrholz) 
has been noted by Siedel,^ A narrow piece of light wood, 
a span in length, was fastened to a whip ; the whirling of the 
whips was called burrejt, and not every boy could do this 
equally well ; the success depended also partly on the length 
and weight of the bull-roarer, as well as on the nature of the 
whip. The little piece of wood had to be cut and smoothed 
with care before it would work properly. After a lapse of 
thirty years, Siedel has forgotten how he fastened the wood 
on to the whip, and also certain other details. The game was 
known in the neighbourhood generally. About the years 
1869 and 1870 a number of the pure Germans of this district 
emigrated to America, and their place has been partly taken 
by Poles, and it would be interesting to find out whether the 
Polish children have adopted this toy, or whether it is 
restricted to the Germans. 

The distribution of the bull-roarer in Europe is carried a 
step farther by Figura,' who states that it not only occurs 
in Poland but in and beyond the Carpathians. He was born 
on the banks of the San in Galicia, which separates the 
Ruter and the Poles, and the bull-roarer is used on both 
sides of the river. He says : 

"'As a child of agricultural parents, I often returned in the 
evening to the village on horseback, driving the cattle home. 

' H. Siedel, " Das Schwirrholz in Westpreussen," Globus^ 1896, p. 67. 
'^ F. Figura, *' Das Schwirrholz in Galizien," Ibid., p. 226. 



THE BULL-ROARER 22/ 

Not always, but often, at such times the bull-roarer is used by 
the young herdsmen when in good humour. The bull-roarer is 
a longish, thin piece of wood, notched at one end on both sides, 
and fastened with a simple knot at the end of a whip. At the 
beginning of the revolutions the bull-roarer produces a note 

corresponding to the letters b s (greatly protracted). By 

swinging some time and more quickly the high note passes into 
a low organ note. This tuning effect is called in Galicia, among 
both Poles and Ruthenians, bzik. The wooden object itself has 
no name. This buzzing or humming noise excites pasturing 
cattle. As soon as the bull-roarers are started the calves stretch 
out their tails into the air, and kick out their hind legs, some- 
times to the right, sometimes to the left, as if they were dancing. 
After some minutes the old cattle follow the young ones, and 
there is a general stampede to the village. Therefore one says 
in Galicia that a man whose brain is not quite right has a ' bzik.' 
It is supposed that the animals get into an idiotic condition 
owing to the buzzing of the bull-roarer. 

" In what a curious way an idea may change may be seen from 
the following. It is well known that in the year 1831 thousands 
of young Poles emigrated to foreign parts, especially to France, 
and there a great number enlisted in the Algerian foreign legion. 
The Poles used to play cards, and their game was called bzik. 
The Frenchmen got to like the game; they could pronounce the 
word, but in writing it down according to French orthography it 
became bezique ! Thus this favourite game of the French gaming 
clubs owes its name to the bull-roarer." 

In one of his charming and suggestive essays Andrew- 
Lang ' first drew attention to the fact that the bull-roarer 
was employed in ancient Greece in connection with the 
Dionysiac Mysteries. 

" Clemens of Alexandria, and Arnobius, an early Christian 

' Andrew Lang, "The Bull- Roarer : A Study of the Mysteries," Custom 
and Myth, 2nd edition, 1885, p. 39. 



228 THE STUDY OF MAN 

father who follows Clemens, describe certain toys of the child 
Dionysus which were used in the mysteries. Among these are 
titrbines^ k(5)voi and pojifioi. The ordinary dictionaries interpret 
all these as whipping-tops, adding that po}xfio^ is sometimes ' a 
magic wheel. * The ancient scholiast on Clemens, however, writes : 
' The K(S)vo^ is a little piece of wood to which a string is fastened, 
and in the mysteries it is whirled round to make a roaring noise.' 

" In the part of the Dionysiac mysteries at which the toys of 
the child Dionysus were exhibited, and during which (as it seems) 
the bull-roarer was whirred, the performers daubed themselves 
all over with clay. This we learn from a passage in which De- 
mosthenes describes the youth of his hated adversary, ^schines. 
The mother of ^schines, he says, was a kind of ' wise woman,' 
and dabbler in mysteries. yEschines used to aid her by bedaub- 
ing the initiate over with clay and bran. The word here used by 
Demosthenes is explained by Harpocration as the ritual term for 
daubing the initiated. A story was told, as usual, to explain this 
rite. It was said that when the Titans attacked Dionysus and 
tore him to pieces, they painted themselves, first with clay, or 
gypsum, that they might not be recognised. Nonnus shows, 
in several places, that down to his time the celebrants of the 
Bacchic mysteries retained this dirty trick. 

'(In Lucian's Treatise on Dancing we read, ' I pass over the 
fact that you cannot find a single ancient mystery in which there 
is not dancing. . . . To prove this I will not mention the 
secret acts of worship, on account of the uninitiated. But this 
much all men know, that most people say of those who reveal the 
mysteries, that they " dance them out." ' Lucian obviously in- 
tends to say that the matter of the mysteries was set forth in 
ballets d' action. Now this is exactly the case in the surviving 
mysteries of the Bushmen. Mr. Orpen, the chief magistrate in 
St. John's Territory, made the acquaintance of Qing, one of the 
last of an all but exterminated tribe. He gave a good deal of 
information about the myths of his people, but refused to answer 
certain questions.' ' You are now asking the secrets that are 

' Cape Monthly Magazine, July, 1874. 



THE BULL.ROARER 22g 

not spoken of.' Mr. Orpen asked, * Do you know the secrets ? ' 
Qing replied, * No, only the initiated men of that dance know 
these things.' To ' dance ' this or that means * to be acquainted 
with this or that mystery ' ; the dances were originally taught by 
Cagn, the mantis, or grasshopper god. In many mysteries Qing, 
as a young man, was not initiated. He could not ' dance them 
out.' " 

This is the whole of the evidence I have been able to 
gather respecting the occurrence of the bull-roarer in 
Europe. 

In Africa it is found in the west and south. Mrs. R. 
Braithwaite Batty' describes the cult of Oro (" Torment "), 
a god of terror and vengeance. The Oro represents the 
active embodiment of the civil power, the local police, the 
mysterious head or idol of the civil government. Under 
the name of Oro the initiates exercise unrestricted and un- 
questioned vengeance on offenders. Any woman getting a 
sight of or finding out the secrets of Oro would be put to 
death. 

"[The supposed ' voice of Oro ' proceeds from a small piece of 
wood, actually worshipped as a god — narrow and tapering at each 
end — somewhat thinner at the edges than in the middle, about 
an inch wide, and measuring from nearly a foot to three feet in 
length. This Oro stick is attached to a string, which is fastened 
to the thin end of a bamboo, or pliable rod, of from six to eight 
feet or more in length, the string being about double the length 
of the stem or handle, which is used something after the fashion 
of a long carter's whip. The motion is horizontal, rotary, and 
continuous. According to the velocity and the size of the stick is 
the sound produced — sometimes a high, shrill tone, sometimes 
deep and grave. The largest stick requires a man of gigantic 
strength to twirl it " (Fig. 39). 

' R. Braithwaite Batty, "Notes on the Yoruba Country," Journ. Anth, 
Inst,, xix. , 1890, p. 160. 



230 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



The Bushmen of South Africa have a bull-roarer which 
slightly increases in width towards its free end, and then 
has a pointed termination ; the button-like attached end has 
a circular notch round which its string is tied, and the other 




Fig. 3q. 

Yoruba Bull-Roarers, for Producing the "Voice of Oro." 

One-sixth natural size. 

end of the string is fastened to a stick. It is spoken of as a 
rain-charm, and is said to be also used as a clapper in driving 
game, and again, " They try to charm their luck in hunting 
by means of bull-roarers " ^ (Fig. 40, No. i). 

^ Ratzel, The History of Mankind (English edition), ii., pp. 275, 276 ; i., 
frontispiece. 



THE BULL-ROARER 23 1 

According to a correspondent of Professor Tylor's in 
South Africa, the bull-roarer is employed to call the men to 
the celebration of secret functions. A minute description 
of the instrument and of its magical power to raise a wind is 
given in Theal's Kaffir Folklore, p. 209/ 

He says: " There is a kind of superstition connected with 
the 7iodiwii that playing with it invites a gale of wind. Men 
will, on this account, often prevent boys from using it when 
they desire calm weather for any purpose." 

Mrs. Carey- Hobson also records the use of the nodiivii 
among the Amakosa Kaffirs {yourn. Ajith. hist., xiv. , p. 
J25). Prof. E. B. Tylor (Academy, April 9, 1881, p. 265) 
says it is used among the Kafifirs " for rain-making, and in 
connection with the rites of initiation to warn women off." 
(The bull-roarer is found sporadically throughout America. 
The Eskimo on the north-west coast have one which is 
ellipsoidal in form with notched edges (Fig. 40, No. 2); it 

appears to be purely a child's toy." * There are several 
records of its occurrence among the North American Indians. 
Bourke ^ first met with the bull-roarer at the snake dance of 
the Tusayan, in the village of Walpi, Arizona, in the month 
of August. " The medicine-men twirled it rapidly, and 
with a uniform motion, about the head, and from front to 
rear, and succeeded in faithfully imitating the sound of a 
gust of rain-laden wind. As explained by one of the 
medicine-men, by making this sound they compelled the 
wind and rain to come to the aid of the crops." It is in 
use among the Apache, and for the same purpose. The 
prehistoric " cliff-dwellers " of the Verde Valley, in Central 
Arizona, also employed it. Bourke also found it among the 

' Lang, loc. cit., p. 38, and Bourke, loc. cit., p. 479. 

^ J. Murdoch, " Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition," 
Ninth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnol., 1887-88 (1892), p. 378. 

^ J. G. Bourke, " The Medicine-Men of the Apache," Ibid., 1893, p. 477. 



232 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Rio Grande Pueblo tribes and the Zufii. Dr. Washington 
Matthews has described it as existing among the Navajo, 
and Major J. W. Powell has observed it in use among the 
Utes of Nevada and Utah. Captain Bourke describes three 
forms of bull-roarers, all apparently connected in symbolism 
with the lightning. The first terminates in a triangular 
point, and the general shape is either that of a long, narrow 
parallelogram, capped with an equilateral triangle, or else 
the whole figure is that of a slender isosceles triangle. 
When the former shape was used, as at the Tusayan snake 
dance, ^ the tracing of a snake or lightning in blue or 
yellow followed down the length of the rhombus and ter- 
minated in the small triangle, which did duty as the snake's 
head. The second form was serrated on both edges to 
simulate the form of the snake or lightning; it is found 
among the Navajo and in the old cliff dwellings. The third 
form, in use among the Apache, is an oblong, 7 or 8 inches 
in length, and i^^ inches in breadth. The pierced end is 
rounded to represent rudely a human head. The Apache 
explained that the lines on the front side of the rhombus 
were the entrails, and those on the rear side, the hair of their 
wind god. The hair is of several colours, and represents 
the lightning. Bourke was led to believe that the rhombus 
(as he terms it) of the Apache was made by the medicine- 
men from wood, generally pine or fir, which had been struck 
by lightning on the mountain-tops. Such wood is held in 
the highest estimation among them, and is used for the 
manufacture of amulets of especial efficacy. The Apache 
name for the rhombus is " sounding wood " (Fig. 40, . 

^°-3^- . . . n . ^^ 

The sympathetic American anthropologist, vMr. Cushing^y^^j:-'^ 
also found a bull-roarer among the Zufii. He says: 

' Cf. also J. G. Bourke, The Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, Lon- 
don, 1884, pp. 158, 159. pi. xiii. 



THE BULL-ROARER 233 

/K' I heard one morning a deep, whirring noise. Running out, 
I saw a procession of three priests of the bow, gorgeous and 
solemn with sacred embroideries and war paint . . . each 
distinguished by his badge of degree. The principal priest car- 
ried in his arms a wooden idol, ferocious in aspect, yet beautiful 
with its decorations of shell, turquoise, and brilliant paint. It 
was nearly hidden by symbolic slats and prayer-sticks most 
elaborately plumed. He was preceded by a guardian with drawn 
bow and arrows, while another followed, twirling the sounding- 
slat, which had attracted alike my attention and that of hundreds 
of the Indians. . . . Slowly they wound their way down the 
hill, across the river, and off toward the mountain of thunder." ^ 

Schmeltz ' describes and figures two bull-roarers in the 
Rijks Ethnographisch Museum in Leiden, which were 
obtained by Dr. H. Ten Kate from the Papago and the 
Pima tribes. They are long and narrow, being respectively 
18:^ inches and 15^ inches in length; both are painted with 
simple devices in red. The only information about them is 
on a label which states that they produce a buzzing noise 
and are used to frighten away evil spirits (Fig. 40, No. 4). 

The next American locality is Central Brazil, where Von 
den Steinen ^ met with it in his second Xingu expedition. 
One, which was straight at one end and pointed at the other 
and 23|- inches in length, was found in a flute-house of the 
Mehinaku ; it was red in the middle and black at each end. 
Two others, which were shaped like a fish, were obtained 
from the Nahuqud; one was decorated with a snake design 
(Fig. 40, No. 5), and the other had a fish or bat pattern; 
they were about 14 inches in length. The Nahuqua showed 

^ F. H. Gushing, " My Adventures in Zufii," The Century Magazine, xxvi. 
(N.S. iv.), 1883, p. 29. 

^ J. D. E. Schmekz, " Das Schwirrholz Versucheiner Monographic," Verh. 
des Vereins fiir naturw. Unterhaltting zu Hamburg, Bd. ix., 1896, p. 121. 

^ Karl von den Steinen, Unier den Naturvolkern Central Brasiliens, Berlin, 
1894, p. 327. 



234 THE STUDY OF MAN 

them in public in the middle of the village how they were 
used ; the women were not driven away. The Bakairi call the 
bull-roarer ** thunder and lightning," or " thunder-storm." 
('While the Bakairi and other tribes use it only at mask 
dances, or also as a plaything, on the river St. Lourengo 
among the Bororo the bull-roarer is employed only at funeral 
festivities.' They swing it first when all the things which 
belonged to the deceased are burnt, and while in a panto- 
mime they tell the spirits of those previously deceased, and 
who are there present, that nothing has been kept back from 
their dead brother, and that they, the spirits, need not look 
for anything more in the village. The bull-roarer is whirled 
a second time when the bones of the deceased are carried 
out of the village, and his spirit accompanies them. The 
underlying idea of all these festivals is the great fear that 
the dead should return to fetch a living person. The women 
are not admitted to the ceremonies which have this inten- 
tion. During these times the women hide themselves in 
the forest or in their houses ; if any woman were present she 
would die, even if she only saw the bull-roarer. Wallace 
tells us that among the Uaupes Indians in the Amazon dis- 
trict the women flee at the sound of the flutes on which are 
played the Juripari or " devil music." 

" From the moment the music was first heard not a female, old 
or young, was to be seen; for it is one of the strangest super- 
stitions of the Uaupes Indians that they consider it dangerous 
for a woman ever to see one of these instruments, that having 
done so she is punished with death, generally by poison. Even 
should the view be perfectly accidental, or should there be only 
a suspicion that the proscribed articles have been seen, no mercy 
is shown." ^ 

' Loc. cit., p. 497. 

^ Alfred R. Wallace, A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, 
1853, p. 349- 



THE BULL-ROARER 235 

Among the Bororo they fear for the women ; among other 
tribes (and each tribe must be investigated separately) the 
women are threatened with death. The Bakairi women are 
threatened if they should enter the flute-house of the men. 
Thus the saying, " The women must die," may have very 
different meanings. 

vVon den Steinen found it nearly impossible to get a bull- 
roarer from the Bororo tribe. The fear of its being misap- 
plied was so great that they prayed him not to show even 
the drawing of one to the women. When he spoke about 
buying one they were hidden ; when he spoke casually 
about a bull-roarer — as one speaks of bows and arrows — the 
men were frightened and turned away, clearly showing that 
they did not want to hear it mentioned. The sentiment is 
connected with the fear of death. The illustrious German 
traveller gives the following interesting account of how he 
obtained some specimens: 

*vWe only got the bull-roarers from three young lads in the 
hobble-de-hoy stage, who valued some small red beads as much 
as the bull-roarer. They made and painted them in the forest. 
First one came very secretly on a dark and misty night to our 
room and asked that the door and window-shutters might be 
closed. Then came the second and after him the third. Each had 
a bull-roarer hidden under a cloth. They whispered that we had 
to hide them very carefully, because women and children would 
die if they saw them, and they also wished that the men should 
not hear anything about it (the naughty boy Tobakiu was greatly 
afraid of his father), because they would become * brabo ' and get a 
beating. We were careful to let them see us put the dangerous 
pieces of wood [Fig. 40, No. 6] right at the bottom of our box." ^ 

Dr. Paul Ehrenreich mentions ' having twice come across 

' Von den Steinen, loc. cit., p. 498. 

■^ Paul Ehrenreich, *' Beitrager zur Volkerkunde Brasiliens." Veroffentl. des 
Kgl. Mus. fiir Volkerkunde, Berlin, i8qi, pp. 38, 71. 



236 THE STUDY OF MAN 

the bull-roarer on his travels in the interior of Brazil. He 
says it is not used by the Karaya on the Araguaya, at least 
he could learn nothing about it, and among the Ipurina of 
the Rio Purus a little bull-roarer of a fish-form was obtained^ 
but nothing could be gathered as to its use. 

The Ethnographical Museum at Leiden has, according to 
Schmeltz,^ a bull-roarer from the small island of Aruba, off 
Venezuela. It is oval in form, roughly made, and used as 
a toy. The population of the island is a mixture of Indians 
and Negroes. Schmeltz reminds us that Von den Steinen 
regards the Caribs as allied to the Nahuquas. 

Of the Peruvians we are informed that " their belief was 
that there was a man in the sky with a sling and a stick, 
and that in his power were the rain, the hail, the thunder, 
and all else that appertains to the regions of the air where 
clouds are formed." ^ 

Mr. W. Skeat, of the Federated Malay States Service, 
has informed me that he has collected a couple of bull- 
roarers (leuibing buluh, " bamboo spear ") from a Patani 
boatman, of the Kuala-Langat district in Selangor. Patani 
is an independent Malay State on the east coast of the 
Malay Peninsula. The bull-roarers (Fig. 40, No. 7) ^ are 
used for scaring elephants away from the plantations. One 
informant said " they make a noise like a tiger." This is 
the first record of the occurrence of the bull-roarer on the 
mainland of Asia, and its use to frighten elephants is anal- 
ogous to the use it is put to by the Bushmen of South 
Africa, as well as by boys in Galicia and Scotland. 

Schmeltz * knows of only one true example of the buU- 

' Schmeltz, /oc. cii., p. 119. 

^ Clements R. Markham, " Note on Garcilasso dela Vega," inHakluyt Soc, 
vol. xli., quoting Acosta, lib. v., cap. iv. 

3 There should have been a tang at the upper end of this figure ; the speci- 
men is eleven inches long. 

* Schmeltz, /oc. cit., p. 103. 



THE BULL-ROARER 237 

roarer from the Malay Archipelago. It occ.urs among 
Toba-Batak of Sumatra, and is a plano-convex, narrow, 
oblong piece of wood about 4^ inches in length (Fig. 40, 
No. 8). It is only a plaything for small children. Another 
child's toy from Java, which is also in the Royal Ethno- 
graphical Museum at Leiden, has some resemblance to a 
bull-roarer, but it is so specialised that we can pass it by, as 
it may have quite another origin. 

fit is also entirely wanting, so far as we know, from Poly- 
nesia, with the exception of New Zealand. It is worth 
bearing in mind that these islands were almost certainly in- 
habited by Melanesians before the Maori invasion, and the 
bull-roarer may belong to the older population. A highly 
decorated specimen occurs in the British Museum; it was 
first figured and noted by Lang.' We have no information 
as to its use. 

When we turn to the black races of Oceania we find a 
very different state of affairs. Alike among the noisy, ex- 
citable, frizzly-haired natives of the Melanesian Archipelago, 
or of the great island of New Guinea, and the taciturn, 
apathetic, curly-haired black fellows of Australia, do we 
finding it playing a very important part in the social life of 
the people. 

Dr. Codrington, the erudite missionary of Melanesia, has 
recorded a bull-roarer in connection with the Matambala 
mysteries in Florida, one of the Solomon Islands.^ In ad- 
mission to these mysteries there was no limit of age and no 
time of life more appropriate than another; even sucklings 
were made Matambala; for the latter the men would go 
into the villages and beg milk from the women, since the 
infants could not come out of the sacred precincts and 

' Lang, loc. cit., p. 35. 

^ R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians : Studies in their Anthropology and 
Folk-Lore, Oxford, 1891, pp. 98, 342. 



238 THE STUDY OF MAN 

the women could not go in. During the three months of 
the ceremony the Matambala, under cover of the terror of 
their pretended association with ghosts, were playing tricks 
and robbing all the country round. From time to time they 
sacrificed to Siko. More than once they made their appear- 
ance in the villages; this they did at night-time, taking 
with them <^2/r^ (bull-roarers) and seesee (bundles of coco-nut 
fronds to beat over a stick). When they approached a vil- 
lage they beat the seesee and whirled the buro ; all the 
women in the village shut fast their houses and were much 
afraid, and gave food to the men through small holes in the 
walls of their houses. The downfall of this superstition and 
imposture, says Dr. Codrington, has been complete. (No 
Matambala celebration has taken place for years; all the 
young people know how the thing was done, the sacred 
precincts were explored, bull-roarers became the playthings 
of the boys, and the old men sat and wept over the pro- 
fanation and their loss of power and privilege. 

It is only in Florida that any superstitious character be- 
longs to the bull-roarer. There is no mystery about it 
when it is used in the Banks Islands to drive away a ghost, 
as in Mota, where it is called nanamatea, " death-maker " ; 
or to make a moaning sound, as in Merlav, where it is called 
worung-tamby " a waller," and used the night after death. 
It is often a common plaything; in Vanua Lava they call it 
mala, " pig," from the noise it makes; in Maewo it is tal- 
viv, " a whirring string " ; in Araga it is merely tavire buay 
** a bit of bamboo." 

The bull-roarer is too well known in the Banks Islands to 
be used in mysteries, and so another apparatus is employed 
in the cult of the Great Tamate (Great " Ghost "), by which 
the peculiar, and certainly very impressive, sound is made, 
which is believed by the outsiders to be the cry or voice of 
the ghosts. This is a flat, smooth stone, on which the butt- 



THE BULL-ROARER 239 

end of the stalk of a fan of palm is rubbed. The vibration 
of the fan produces an extraordinary sound, which can be 
modulated in strength and tone at the will of the performer.* 

In New Guinea the bull-roarer is known at one or two 
places in Kaiser Wilhelms-Land. Krause ^ obtained one 
from Finsch Hafen about sixteen inches in length, and de- 
corated with an insect,^ and Dr. O. Schellong * says they 
play a great part in the circumcision feast in the same dis- 
trict. They serve to warn off the women, and are not 
allowed to be seen by them. We thus get an explanation 
of some objects collected by Finsch ^ from Friedrich- 
Wilhelmshafen. At Bilia they were wrapped up carefully 
in tapa, and kept in the assembly house; the natives seemed 
to regard them with a tabu-like fear, and nobody was 
allowed to look at them. 

We have more information regarding the bull-roarer in 
British New Guinea, where it occurs in Torres Straits, and 
along the northern shore of the Papuan Gulf. So far as 
our present knowledge goes it is associated with mask 
dances, and is employed only by the peoples ® whom 
Mr. Ray and myself term " Papuans," as in distinc- 
tion to the Melanesian immigrants of the south-eastern 
peninsula. 

The energetic and enthusiastic pioneer missionary of 

' Codrington, loc. cit., p. 80. 

^ E. Krause, Zeitschr . fiir Ethnol. ^ xx., 1888 ; VerhandL^ p. 267. 

' C/l, A. C. Haddon, Decorative Art of British New Guinea^ p. 103. 

* O. Schellong, "Das Barlum-Fest der Gegend Finschhafens," Internai. 
Arch, filr Ethnogr., ii., 1889, p. 145. 

^ O. Finsch, Ethnologischer Atlas, taf. v., figs. 5, 6, Leipzig, 1888 ; " Eth- 
nologische Erfahrungen," etc., Annalen des K. K. Nat. Hof museums, Wien, 
1891, p. 65 [203]. 

^ A. C. Haddon, Decor. Art, p. 254, and Evolution in Art, 1895, p. 62. 

' S. H. Ray and A. C. Haddon, "A Study of the Languages of Torres 
Straits," Part i., Proc. Roy. Irish Acad. (3), ii., 1893, p. 463 ; Part ii., vol. iv., 
1896, p. 119 (r/. p. 370). 



240 THE STUDY OF MAN 

British New Guinea, the Rev. James Chalmers, or " Tam- 
ate," as he likes to be called by his black and his white 
friends, has described the initiation ceremony among the 
Toaripi (Motu-Motu). /At about the age of seventeen or 
eighteen the boys enter the Eramo (sacred house) ; they 
leave off the sporran worn by the boys, and adopt the string 
worn by the men; their heads are shaved, and they then re- 
main many months until the hair has grown long again. 
There is a tabu on certain kinds of food. " Not until after 
they have left the Eramo is the Roaring Bull [bull-roarer, 
tiparit\ seen " ; nor until then can an initiate ** wear a mask 
or join in the dances and drum-beatings of the tribe, and 
only then is he considered a man. Not until he has de- 
scended from the Eramo does he know a woman. All sing- 
ing, dancing, and drum-beating are considered sacred and 
never uselessly done." ' 

Mr. Chalmers has recently given to the museum of the 
London Missionary Society two bull-roarers, with the fol- 
lowing description: " Tiparzc, only seen by a young man 
after initiation into manhood, and then pigs are killed, and 
a large feast prepared. All women and young people leave 
the village lest they should hear it and die. Had great 
difficulty in getting them." The larger of these two meas- 
ures 20 inches by 5-^ inches, and is carved on both sides with 
scrolls, which are, as usual, painted red, black, and white. 
The second one is iij inches by if inches; but instead of 
being ellipsoidal, it is practically an elongated isosceles 
triangle with a pointed base — one side has a slightly carved 
tooth-pattern along the margin (Fig. 40, Nos. 10, 11). 

In connection with the same ceremonies at which the 
masks are employed, certain flat, or slightly biconvex, 
ellipsoidal wooden objects are used, which are generally 

^ J. Chalmers, Repi. Austral. Assoc. Advanc. Sci., ii, 1890, p. 313 ; cf. 
also, Pioneering in New Guinea, 1887, p. 86. 



THE BULL-ROARER 24 1 

prolonged at one end into a handle, and are perforated at 
the other. They are often adorned at the side with vege- 
table fibre. Their shape bears a close resemblance to that 
of a bull-roarer, and I have ventured to suggest ' that they 
may have arisen from this implement, which we have seen 
is used in this district during the initiation ceremonies. An 
objection to this view might be urged from the circum- 
stance that among those people who employ the bull-roarer 
during initiation ceremonies, the implement is so sacred 
that it may not be exhibited to any woman or uninitiate. 
But these objects are not actual bull-roarers, and even if 
they are modelled upon the bull-roarers, their relatively 
large size and their decoration alter their character, and it 
is very improbable that any initiate would inform the unin- 
structed that there was any resemblance between the two 
objects. These ceremonial tablets, as I have termed them, 
vary from about twenty inches to sixty inches in length, 
and, so far as I know, without exception they bear delinea- 
tions of the human form or face. 

Very similar to these ceremonial tablets are some oval 
wooden slabs that Mr. Chalmers has recently sent to this 
country from the mouth of the Fly River, on which 
are carved conventionalised human faces, associated with 
simple patterns; some he describes as '' gope-gope, charms 
hung in new houses for good luck . . . gope, house 
charm . . . gopc, figure-head of canoe, gives good 
passage, and is thought a wonderful charm." I suspect 
these, too, are in reality bull-roarer derivatives. 

Mr. Chalmers is also our authority for the existence of 
initiation ceremonies in this district at which the bull-roarer, 
burumamaramu, is exhibited. He says: " When used all 
women and children leave the village and go into the bush. 
The old men swing it and show it to the young men when 

^ A. C. Haddon, Dec. Art, New Guinea, p. 102. 
16 



242 THE STUDY OF MAN 

the yams are ready for digging (May and June)." The 
name evidently means " the mother of yams." * These 
bull-roarers are decorated with incised or carved designs. 
At the same occasion a wooden female image (uvio-mogurUy 
urumuruburUy etc.) is given to the lads to be worn by them, 
but it must not be seen by women or children. 
Cl found that in the island of Mabuiag, in Torres Straits, 
the large carved and painted bull-roarers {bigu) (Fig. 40, 
No. 12) were formerly suspended round certain platforms 
that were connected with the turtle fishery. A small bull- 
roarer (wainis) was also associated with this cult, but it was 
kept in the bush. Women were allowed to see it. ** It 
was half-play," they said. When the men went out to 
catch the floating turtle, they took a bigu from the platform 
and swung it over the canoe preparatory to starting. On 
the approach of the successful canoes a man who had 
stationed himself on a hill would whirl a wainis, and the 
women knew that the fishers had been lucky. At Moa a 
man would raise the wind by painting himself black all over 
and whirling a bull-roarer.^ 

In the autumn of 1888, I visited Muralug (Prince of Wales 
Island), in Torres Straits. The son of the chief of that 
island was a friend of mine, and when I went to his father's 
village I determined to see whether I could discover if these 
people, who are Papuans, and not Australians, had a know- 
ledge of the bull-roarer. 

So I took the old man and his son apart, and was careful 
not only to see that nobody was close by, but to speak in a 
low tone of voice. As I could not speak their language, 

• S. H. Ray and A. C. Haddon, " Languages of Torres Straits," ii., Proc, 
Roy. Irish Acad. (3), iv., 1897, p. 309. {Buruma, a variety of yam ; maramu, 
mother.) 

2 A. C. Haddon, "The Ethnography of the Western Tribe of Torres 
Straits," Journ. Anth. Inst., xix., i8go, pp. 406, 427, 432. 



THE BULL-ROARER 243 

our means of communication was the jargon English which 
is spoken all over the Pacific. 

, I said to him, " You make him boy man ? " (That is^ 
' Do you have initiation ceremonies in which boys are made 
into men ? ") " Yes," he replied, " we make him boy 
man." " You got thing, time you make him boy man ? " 
At first the old chief would say nothing, and looked stolidly 
ignorant, but I persisted, and whirled my arm and made a 
whirring noise, and said, " I savvy that thing. You got 
him?" This was too much for him. His surprise that 
any white man knew anything about it was so evident that 
he was obliged to admit that they had the implement. 
*' What name you call him ? " The old boy looked cau- 
tiously all around, and after satisfying himself that no one 
could overhear him, he whispered, " Waness.'' After a 
considerable amount of coaxing, he promised to make one 
for me, evidently being satisfied in his own mind that I was 
an initiate of some kind or other. The next morning he 
took me and his son into the bush, and took precautions 
that he was not followed. When some distance off he pro- 
duced a bull-roarer, and showed me how to swing it. Then 
in a secret and confidential manner he gave it to me, making 
me promise not to show it to any woman. I naturally took 
this to mean any native Avoman, and I did not. I have 
given this specimen (Fig. 40, No. 13) to the British Museum. 
Its form, like that in most countries, was a long oval, pointed 
at both ends, and with bevelled edges. One end had a 
short bar-like projection to prevent the string from slipping 
off; the latter was about a yard in length, and its other end 
was attached to a stick. It was whirled round and round 
over the head. I was informed that the waiiess was usually 
ornamented with a central white band, a red band being 
painted a short distance above and below it. 

A few weeks afterwards I was in Christianised Mer (Mur- 



244 THE STUDY OF MAN 

ray Island) — a small island about one hundred and twenty 
miles from Muralug — and to my great surprise I saw a 
number of small boys playing with similar bull-roarers. 
These boys were scholars in the Mission School, and had 
been brought from Saibai, a low island near the coast of 
New Guinea, at the other end of the Straits. 

In one island a bull-roarer was too sacred to be shown to 
a woman ; in another it was a plaything ! 

All over Australia the bull-roarer is regarded with re- 
ligious awe, and it is first shown to lads at the ceremony 
during which they are initiated into manhood. With us 
manhood is merely a question of age — with these people it 
is a state of grace ; unless a lad has been initiated, he counts 
as nobody ; he has no tribal rights, nor can he perform any 
ceremony. No woman is allowed to see the bull-roarer; if 
shown by a man to a woman or uninitiate the punishment 
to both is death. I was informed that the death penalty 
was similarly inflicted among the eastern tribe of Torres 
Straits if the names were divulged of the sacred masks which 
were worn during the initiation ceremonies, and if a woman 
identified the disguised chief performers of one of the cer- 
emonies ** she died that night." ^ 

In some parts of Australia a deluge myth is associated 
with the bull-roarer, and the lads are told that if ever a 
woman is allowed to see one the earth will open, and water 
gush forth and submerge it. The old men point spears at 
the boys' eyes, saying, ** If you tell this to any woman you 
will die; you will see the ground broken up and like the sea; 
if you tell this to any woman or to any child you will be 
killed." The Rev. Mr. Fison gives the following tradition: 

Some children of the Kurnai, in playing about, found a 
turndun (bull-roarer), which they took home to the camp 

^ A. C. Haddon, " Manners and Customs of the Torres Straits Islanders," 
yourn. Royal Inst, of Great Britain, 1890. 




Fig. 40. Comparative Series of Bull-Roarers. 

Bushman (after Ratzel) ; 2. Eskimo (after Murdoch), 73X2; 3. Apache, North America 
(after Bourke), 8X1$; 4. Pima, North America (after Schmeltz), 155X1 ; 5. Nahuqud, 
Brazil (after V. d. Steinen), 13X2; 6. Bororo, Brazil (after V. d. Steinen), 15X33; 7. Pa- 
tani Malay, E. coast of Malay Peninsula (original, from a description by W. Skeat); 8. Su- 
matra (after Schmeltz), 4^X J ; 9. New Zealand (original), 131X41 ; 10,11. Toaripi, British 
New Guinea (original), 20X55, iiiXiJ ; 1~. Mabuing, Torres Straits, 16X3B ; 13. Aluralug, 
Torres Straits (ori^nal), 6JX15 ; 14. Mer, Torres Sfraits (original), sXr; 15. South Aus- 
tralia (after Etheridge), 14X1?, both sides of the same specimen are shown; 1(5. Wirad- 
thuri tribes, N. S.W. (after Matthews), 134X2^ ; 17. Cl.irence River tribe, N. S. W. (after 
Matthews), 5X1; IH. S. E. coast, N. S. W. (after Matthews), 13X2J ; 19. Kamilaroi tribe, 
Weir River, Queensland (after Matthews), iijXib- 

245 



246 THE STUDY OF MAN 

and showed the women. Immediately the earth crumbled 
away, and it was all water, and the Kurnai were drowned." 
So much has been written of late concerning the initiation 
ceremonies in Australia, that it is impossible for me to enter 
into the subject at any length. Matthews,' who has recently 
published some very interesting observations on the Bora, 
or initiation ceremonies of the Kamilaroi tribe, records that 
at the main camp, during the early part of nearly every 
night, one of the masters of the ceremonies would go alone 
into the bush a short distance from the camp, and for about 
two hours would sound a wooden instrument which these 
blacks called inurrawan, which is supposed to represent the 
voice of Durramoolan, their native name for the evil spirit, 
who rules in the night. During the time the instrument re- 
ferred to was being sounded in the adjacent forest, the men 
of the tribes would dance and yell, and make hideous noises, 
and all the gins would sing and beat time, those of each 
tribe singing their own peculiar song. Howitt ^ says: 

'' Thararmllun ^ was not everywhere thought to be a malevolent 
being, but he was dreaded as one who could severely punish the 
trespasses committed against those tribal ordinances and customs 
whose first institution is ascribed to him. He, it is said, taught 
the Murring all the arts they knew; he instituted the ceremonies 
of Initiation of Youth ; he made the original i7iudji (the turndun, 
or bull-roarer, of the Kurnai) ; ordered the animal names to be 
assumed by men; and directed what rules should be observed as 
to the food permitted or forbidden to certain persons. It was 
taught to the Murring youths at their initiation . . . that 
Tharamulun himself watched the youths from the sky, prompt to 
punish, by sickness or death, the breach of his ordinances. 

' R. H. Matthews, "The Bora, or Initiation Ceremonies of the Kamilaroi 
Tribe," Journ. Anth. Inst., xxiv., 1895, p. 419. 

* A. W. Howitt, " On Some Australian Beliefs," ibid., xiii., 1883, p. 192. 
^ Also called Thrumii/un or Daramulun. 



THE BULL-ROARER 247 

These prohibitions were only relaxed as the youths proved 
themselves worthy, and in some cases appear to have been 
perpetual. 

" The knowledge of TharamiJhm, and his attributes and pow- 
ers, was only communicated to the youths at their initiation, 
and was regarded as something eminently secret and not on any 
account to be divulged to women or children. It is said that the 
women among the Ngarego and Wolgal knew only that a great 
being lived beyond the sky, and that he was spoken of by them as 
J* apajig {YdiihQr). . . . The old men strenuously maintained 
that the knowledge of the name of Tharamillim was imparted to 
themselves only at their initiation by the old men. This name is 
to them so sacred that even in speaking to me of it, when no one 
else was present but ourselves, the old men have done so in almost 
whispers, and have used elliptical expressions to avoid the word 
itself, such as ' He,' ' the man,' or ' the name I told you of.' I 
believe that the dread of offending an unseen, powerful, possibly 
present spirit, lies much at the root of the disinclination to utter 
the name Thara7Jiulun. One old Theddora woman (the last of 
her tribe) said, when I asked her who was Tharamulun j ' He 
lives up there ' (pointing to the sky) ; * I only know that; and also 
that when boys are made young men he comes down to frighten 
them. I once heard him coming with a noise like thunder.' " 

In describing in detail the initiation ceremonies of the 
Coast Marring tribe, Hewitt says ' : 

" The Mudji is held to have been first made and used by Dara- 
mulun, when in the beginning of things he instituted these cere- 
monies, and constituted the aboriginal society as it exists. The 
noise made by it is the voice of Darafuulun, calling together the 
initiated ; and, moreover, it represents the muttering of thunder, 
which is said to be his voice ' calling to the rain to fall and make 
the grass grow up green,' These are the very words used by 
Umbara, the minstrel and improvisatore of his tribe." 

' A. W. Howitt, "On Some Australian Ceremonies of Initiation," Journ. 
Anth. Inst., xiii., 1884, p. 446. 



248 THE STUDY OF MAN 

In a later paper, Howitt states that *' Showing the Grand- 
father " is the cryptic phrase used to describe the central 
mystery of the Jeraeil,'' or initiation ceremonies of the Kur- 
nai tribe. In reality it means the exhibition of the Tundun, 
and the revelation to them of the ancestral beliefs. The 
Kurnai have two bull-roarers, a larger one called the Tu7t- 
dun, or " the man," and a smaller one called Rukut Tu?t- 
diin, " the woman " or " wife of Tundun." The larger 
one is also called " Grandfather," Wemtwm ox Muk-Brogan."^ 
In this the Kurnai differ from the Murring, who have only 
one bull-roarer, but they agree with several other Australian 
tribes. Where there is only one the women are totally ex- 
cluded. 

The women and the children are always told that, at the 
secret parts of the Jeraeil, Tundun himself comes down to 

make the boys into men." The hideous sounds which 
the uninitiated may chance to hear from a distance they are 
told is Tundun's voice, and iihey are warned not to leave 
their camp while he is about, lest he should kill them with 
his spears. Howitt describes how the newly initiated youths 
thoroughly enter into the fun of frightening the women, 
and, having got over their awe of the bull-roarers, they 
make an outrageous noise with them. It sometimes hap- 
pens that, during the nocturnal perambulation, one of the 
bull-roarers becomes detached from its string, and is thus 
lost. If, perchance, it is afterwards picked up by a woman 
or a child, their curiosity is satisfied by the statement that 
it is a '* paddle belonging to Tundun," which he is supposed 
to have dropped in returning home. The shape of the buU- 

' A. W. Howitt, " The Jeraeil, or Initiation Ceremonies of the Kurnai 
Tribe," Journ. Anth. Inst., xiv., 1885, pp. 312, 315. 

"^ Weintwin — father's father, or father's father's brother. All those initiated 
at the same Jeraeil are Brogan, or " Comrade" to each other. Muk-Brogatt 
is the " Chief Comrade." 



THE BULL-ROARER 249 

roarer is much like that of the Httle bark paddle which the 
Kurnai use when sitting down in their canoes. 

In his second paper on the Bora ceremony/ Matthews re- 
fers several times to the bull-roarers : 

" Towards the close of the rites two men with bull-roarers 
went out into some clear ground in front of the novices, and 
commenced loudly sounding these instruments. The boys were 
now directed to look at the two men, and were told that all simi- 
lar noises that they had ever heard were made in this way. 
Several of the Kooringal then walked in front of the boys, with 
uplifted tomahawks in their hands, and told them that if they 
ever divulged this, or any of the other performances which they 
had seen in the bush, to the women or the uninitiated, they would 
be killed. The murruwafis were then given into the hands of the 
novices, and they were invited to inspect them." 

The bull-roarer, or yiintha, according to Mr. S. Gason,' 
is one of the most important secrets of the Dieri tribe of 
Central Australia, and the knowledge of it is kept inviolate 
from the women. The belief is, that if the women were to 
see 2, yn7itJia which had been used at the ceremonies, and 
know the secrets of it, the Dieri tribe would ever afterwards 
be without snakes, lizards, and other such food. When the 
yuntha is given to the youth, he is instructed that he must 
twirl it round his head when he is out hunting. The Dieri 
think that when \.\\^ yuntha is handed to the young VVilyarii 
he becomes inspired by Muramura. The yuntha is from 6 
to 9 inches long, -^ inch thick, and 2 to 2j inches wide; it 
has notches at each side, near one end. 

Among the Arunta tribe of the McDonnell Ranges, in 
Central Australia, the natives not only employ the small 

^yourn. Anth. Lnst., xxv., 1896, p. 336. 

2 A. W. Howitt, '* The Dieri and Other Kindred Tribes of Central Australia," 
ibid., XX., i8go, p. 83. 



250 THE STUDY OF MAN 

bull-roarer, irula, in the usual way, but the lad on whom 
circumcision has been performed 

/* is furnished with a bundle of large irula (not used for making 
a humming noise), which he carries with him, and which are be- 
stowed in order to promote speedy recovery. These sticks 
belong to the class known as Churina. . . . The sacred 
stones {churina) of the tribe are flat stones of various sizes, of 
soft material, such as micaceous rock, and generally engraved in 
various ways. These stones are greatly valued by the natives ; 
they are handed down from generation to generation, and the 
women are never allowed to see them . . . under penalty of 
death. . . . The humming-stick {irula) also belongs to the 
churina class. . . . The marks on the irula are evidently copied 
from the marks on the stone churiHa. . . . The churina may be 
described as symbolic of the totem."* 

Other references to bull-roarers and their uses will be 
found in Dr. Stirling's account of the anthropological por- 
tion of the Horn expedition ^ \ in two papers by Hardman,^ 
who says: |* The whirling-sticks, inero-mero, used to drown 
the shrieks of the victim, as well as the flint or shell-knives 
used in the operation, are considered sacred, and are not to 
be looked upon by women under pain of death." Probably 
Hardman was repeating only hearsay evidence. Some ob- 
servers who have witnessed the ceremony deny that the 
lads shriek. A recent paper by Mr. R. Etheridge,* the 

• F. J. Gillen, " Notes on Some Manners and Customs of the Aborigines 
of the McDonnel Ranges, Belonging to the Arunta Tribe," Report on the Work 
of the Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia, pt. iv., Anthropology, 
1896, pp. 172, 179. ^ Loc. cit., p. 76. 

^ E. T. Hardman, " Notes on a Collection of Native Weapons and Imple- 
ments from Tropical Western Australia (Kimberley District)," Proc. Roy. Irish 
Acad. (3), i., 1887, p. 68 ; "Notes on Some Habits and Customs of the Natives 
of the Kimberley District, Western Australia," loc. cit., p. 73. 

"* R. Etheridge, Junior, " On Circular and Spiral Incised Ornaments on 
Australian Aboriginal Implements and Weapons," Records of the Australian 
Museum, iii., 1897, p. i. 



THE BULL-ROARER 25 I 

Curator of the Australian Museum in Sydney, and papers 
by E. Palmer ' and R. H. Matthews ^ may be consulted with 
profit. The latter states that the large and small bull-roarers 
{inudthega and moonibear) of the Wiradthuri tribe, after they 
are shown and explained to the novices, are destroyed by 
splitting them in pieces, and driving them into the ground 
out of sight, or they are burnt (p. 311). The most recently 
published paper is one by Matthews,^ which gives a useful 
synopsis of Australian bull-roarers (Fig. 40, Nos. 16-19). 

More than one account informs us that a bull-roarer is 
one of the credentials that a messenger carries with him 
when he is sent to summon the class or the tribes to an 
initiation ceremony. 

Having briefly surveyed most of the recorded accounts of 
the bull-roarer in various parts of the world, it is now time 
to see what may be learned from these facts. 

The distribution of this implement is very wide, but by 
no means continuous — to borrow an expression from the no- 
menclature of the study of the geographical distribution of 
animals. 

I have drawn up the following table in order that we may 
see at a glance the various purposes for which the bull-roarer 
is employed, and the different places where it is so used. I 
have marked with a X those places where that particular use 
is an universal practice (or very nearly so) ; the / means that 
some tribes only use it for that purpose, and a ? indicates 
that I believe this to be, or to have been, its use. 

The distribution of the bull-roarer seems to preclude the 
view that it has had a single origin and been carried by 

' E. Palmer, *' Notes on Some Australian Tribes," Journ. Anth. Inst., xiii., 
p. 295. 

2 R. H. Matthews, "The Burbung of the Wiradthuri Tribes," ibid., xxv., 
i8g6, pp. 295, et seq. 

"^ Ibid., *• Bull-roarers Used by Australian Aborigines," ibid., xxvii., 1897, 
P- 52. 



252 



THE STUDY OF MAN 





•vnvaisnv 


X 


X 


X 








X 


< 
w 

2 

D 
O 

W 
2 


•sjtEjjg sajjox 


^^ 


^ 










•jinQ UBnd^tj 


X 


X 










•UEtUJSQ 


X 


X 










4:< 

S 2 


■SI sjtung 


- 








- 




•sj uouioiog 


- 












•aNV^vaz msn 














•Avavw -vHxvwns 














< 

5 
w 
S 

< 


"V H5"0S 








- 






•VMJ^ON 


X 




X 




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(J 

(I. 


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X 


X 


X 








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X 










X 


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o 

OS 

D 

u 


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X 












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1 

1-1 

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CQ 

a 
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o 

C/3 

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S a 

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o 
S 

<u 
o 

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o 

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o 

S 

S 

m 
O 

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qj g 

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£ 

c 

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THE BULL-ROARER 



253 



X 



X 



X 



X 



o 
Ml 



O 

<u 


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> 



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r- TS 



^ ^i 



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3 



254 THE STUDY OF MAN 

conquest, trade, or migration, in the usual way. It is im- 
possible to say whether it formed part of the religious 
equipment of man in his first wanderings over the earth. 
The former view does not appear to be at all probable : it is 
impossible to prove the latter supposition. 

The implement itself is so simple that there is no reason 
why it should not have been independently invented in many 
places and at diverse times. On the other hand, it is usually 
regarded as very sacred, and as being either a god itself, as 
representing a god, or as having been taught to men by a 
god. Where this is the case there is every reason to believe 
that its use is very ancient. So that it is probable that in 
certain areas it was early discovered and has since been 
transmitted to the descendants, and perhaps to the neigh- 
bours, of the original inventors. 

For example, in America it may belong to the oldest 
stock, and have accompanied the peoples in their extension 
over that continent, and here and there it may have died 
out. It is conceivable that it was employed in Africa 
originally by the Bushmen, and possibly other of the Afri- 
can pigmy folk. Its spread among the Zulus from the Bush- 
men is not an impossibility, for we often find, as I mention 
in the chapter on well-worship, that a conquering race may 
have recourse to the magical practices of the indigenous 
population, especially in the matters of agriculture and for 
the control of the elements. The bull-roarer may have arisen 
among the Negroes of the West Coast, or been adopted by 
them from another race. 

It is, however, very dangerous to generalise from such 
imperfect data as we possess at present, and doubtless the 
bull-roarer will be found to be more prevalent than our 
records show. It is, as Lang remarks, an instrument easily 
invented by savages, and easily adopted into the ritual of 
savage mysteries. 



THE BULL-ROARER 255 

The peculiar, unearthly noise made by the bull-roarer at 
once marked it out as something mysterious. According to 
the size and form or the celerity of the whirling, so does the 
sound vary. To men who feci the world around them, 
whose nature is permeated with the kinship of things 
animate and inanimate, and who perceive no real distinction 
between life and not-life or between different kinds of 
beings — to such men the deep whirring sound, the buzzing, 
or the shriller whizzing of the bull-roarer, awakens strange 
sensations, which they try to express and formulate. In 
harmony with the conceptions of all primitive folk, they 
would argue that as the sounds resemble those of a mighty 
rushing wind, or of wind-driven rain, there must be some 
connection — some heavenly correspondence, as the mystic 
Swedenborg expressed it — between them. Professor Tylor 
has termed this savage conception " sympathetic magic." 
This, I believe, is the explanation of the widely spread con- 
nection between the bull-roarer and the wind and the rain, 
the thunder and the lightning. 

The wind may be raised to enable canoes to go out fishing, 
and so the bull-roarer insensibly may have come in some in- 
stances to be regarded as a fishing charm, and to bring good 
fortune not to the fishing alone, but good luck generally. 

The same line of thought is applicable to its function of 
producing the rain, which made the grass green and the 
yams to grow. 

A time arrives when men argue thus: (What power is it 
that brings good fortune and abundant crops but that of a 
divine person ? That the bull-roarer should then be ac- 
credited as a god is by no means to be wondered at. In- 
deed, it would be illogical not to do so, starting from our 
premises; and savages are not illogical or irrational beings, 
though their arguments may lead them to conclusions that 
seem strange to us. 



^ 



256 THE STUDY OF MAN 

In its deification the bull-roarer reaches its apotheosis, its 
highest status. Whilst it was being translated from a magi- 
cal instrument to a divine person, or the symbol of divinity, 
we may readily conceive that it was removed from the pos- 
sibility of contamination by women. From being tabu it 
became sacrosanct, and it took its place among the mysteries ; 
and well it might. The idea of contamination or enervation 
by women has been several times discussed by anthropolo- 
gists,^ and so the holy implements and the holy ceremonies 
are kept out of possible danger by rendering it profanation 
for women to have anything to do with them. No doubt 
selfish aims entered into this restriction, but selfish aims are 
not unknown among higher forms of religion. 

The initiation ceremonies of the lads are immensely im- 
portant, as they mark the appreciation of the greatest facts 
of true religion as we understand it — the brotherhood of 
man and the communion of man with his God. I use this 
term in its highest significance, for the mystical union of the 
Church with Christ is a conception that is taught by so- 
called savages in their initiation ceremonies. Brotherhood 
has reference only to those of the same communion, to those 
who have passed through the same ceremonies. Even in 
the nineteenth century many of us find it difficult to extend 
this conception. I cannot now enter into the deeper signifi- 
cance of these initiation ceremonies, but there is nothing to 
wonder at in the reverence paid to the symbol of the 
" Grandfather." 

" By symbolism," writes Count Goblet d'Alviella,'^ " the 
simplest, the commonest objects are transformed, idealised, 

' A. E. Crawley, " Sexual Taboo: a Study in the Relations of the Sexes," 
Journ. Anth. Inst., xxiv., 1894-95, pp. 116, 219, 439. J. G. Frazer, The 
Golden Bough, i. , 1890, pp. 170, 171. W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of 
the Semites, 1889, pp. 435, 462. E. Westermarck, 7'he History of Human 
Marriage, 1891, pp. 151-156, 541. 

^ Goblet d'Alviella, The Migration of Symbols, 1894, Eng. trans. 



THE BULL-ROARER 257 

and acquire a new and, so to say, an illimitable value." In 
the Eleusinian mysteries, the author of the PliilosopJioumena 
relates that at the initiation to the higher degree, " there 
was exhibited as the great, the admirable, the most perfect 
object of mystic contemplation, an ear of corn that had 
been reaped in silence ; and two crossed lines suffice to re- 
call to millions of Christians the redemption of the world 
by the voluntary sacrifice of a god." 

" It is sentiment, and above all religious sentiment, that resorts 
largely to symbolism, in order to place itself in more intimate 
communication with the being, or abstraction, it desires to ap- 
proach. To that end men are everywhere seen either choosing 
natural or artificial objects to remind them of the Great Hidden 
One, or themselves imitating, in a systematic manner, the acts 
and deeds they attribute to Him — which is a way of participating 
in His life." 

It is the fate of religious symbols to lose their pristine 
significance, and this has in places overtaken the bull-roarer, 
so that it has in various localities degenerated into a child's 
plaything. Numerous analogous degenerations of symbols 
will be found in a study of decorative art. 

Dr. Codrington has revealed, among the Melanesians, not 
only sacred secret societies, which doubtless had their origin 
in a clan system similar to that of Australia, but various 
stages in the disintegration of those societies, which event- 
ually come to be little more than clubs. Some of these 
secret societies take upon themselves judicial or predatory 
functions, and for law and order, or for purely selfish aims, 
they terrorise non-members, and especially the women. 
The bull-roarer, as I have already indicated, is used for 
these baser ends. 

The weird sound of the whirling bull-roarer is suggestive 

of unseen forces, and so it naturally becomes associated in 

17 



258 THE STUDY OF MAN 

men's minds with spirits or ghosts. It may thus come to 
be a means of communication with the spirits, a use to 
which it is put in West Africa and Melanesia. 

There is one collateral use of the bull-roarer which is of 
interest. I have quoted Mrs. Gomme's and Figura's de- 
scriptions of its effects on cattle. The poor animals evi- 
dently mistake the noise for the buzzing of the gad-fly or 
bot-fly, and instinctively they take to flight. I do not 
know whether the name " bull-roarer " has anything to do 
with this, but I suspect that this is the explanation of the 
statements that the Bushmen use it as a clapper for driving 
game and as a charm in hunting. It certainly would prove 
a useful instrument if these little hunters could by its means 
drive their game so crazy that they would not know which 
way to turn, and it would also prove very serviceable in 
their raids on the cattle of the Zulus. 

Most likely we shall never know for certain whether the 
early savages of Northern Europe possessed the bull-roarer; 
but there is every probability in favour of the view that if 
such were the case, it had to them a magical and mystical sig- 
nificance, as we have seen it has amongst other primitive folk. 

The evidence that Andrew Lang has brought forward 
supports this conclusion. Even in the most cultured period 
of Greek civilisation there were certain sacred mysteries, 
during the celebration of which the initiates danced, prob- 
ably in a nude condition, as we are told their bodies were 
daubed with clay, while they whirled the bull-roarer. The 
parallelism with the initiation ceremonies of the Australians is 
complete. It is obvious that these and many other elements 
in the religious practices and beliefs of the Greeks were sur- 
vivals of savagery. The religion of the fathers is long con- 
served as ceremonial practice by the piety of the children. 

This insignificant toy is perhaps the most ancient, widely 
spread, and sacred religious symbol in the world. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE SINGING GAMES OF CHILDREN 

IN country places, or even in our towns, groups of boys 
and girls, or more frequently of girls only, may be seen 
dancing in a ring, walking in rows, or performing certain 
actions, and singing all the while. These singing games are 
now dying out, but in some places they are being replaced 
by other singing games of a purely artificial character, which 
are taught in school. The latter have no interest for us, 
but it will be found that many of the former illustrate 
curious phases in the history of man. 

In the last chapter, when speaking of the ceremonies in 
which the bull-roarer was employed, I pointed out that 
dancing is an important element in all the ceremonies of 
savages. The dancing varies much in character; in no case 
does it resemble the modern " round " or " fast " dances, 
but there is a close similarity between the old-fashioned 
" square " dances and the dances of savages. One may say 
without hesitancy that " Sir Roger de Coverley " and other 
country dances, as well as the essential figures of the quad- 
rilles and lancers, are survivals of ancient dances, the two 
latter having been greatly modified by professional dancers. 

In a lecture before the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 
in March, 1897, Sir E. Clarke pointed out that it has been 
alleged in various quarters that our English country dance 
is derived from the French contredanse. John Wilson 

259 



260 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Croker wrote: " Our country dances are a corruption in 
name and a simplification of figure of the French contre- 
danse.'' De Quincey, in his Life and Manners, Dr. Busby, 
in h.is Dictionary of Mtcsic, and Archbishop Trench, in Eitg- 
lisJi : Past and Present, adopted the same view. On the 
other hand. Weaver wrote in his History of Dancing (1712) : 
*' Country dances are a dancing the pecuHar growth of this 
nation, tho' now transplanted into almost all the Courts of 
Europe." Feuillet, in a little book published in Paris in 
1706, entitled Recueil de Contredanses, says: " Les Anglais 
en sont les premiers inventeurs. ' * Nearly all the dances in the 
volume are English. For instance, the famous *\Green 
<, Sleeves " appears as Les MancJies Vertes, and nearly all the 
versions correspond with those in John Playford's Dancing 
Master of 1686 (7th edition). Littre, in his classical Dic- 
tionnaire de la Langne Frangaise, admits that the contredanse 
is a kind of old-fashioned English dance imported into 
France under the Regency between about 1723 and 1745. 
Clarke says: 

"The contredanse was, in fact, first introduced to Paris in 1745, 
when it was given in a ballet entitled ' Des Fetes de Polymnie,' 
by Rameau. Its success was so great that it was afterwards em- 
ployed in all the future divertisseuients. It is clear, therefore, 
that the French borrowed the country dance from us. Event- 
ually they turned it into the quadrille, which was imported into 
England about eighty years ago, and made a great sensation 
when first danced at ' Almacks ' by the famous Lady Jersey and 
her entourage in 1815." ^ 

The following extract from Hey wood's A Woman Kild 
with Kindness (\6ojY will illustrate the variety of the 
dances that were formerly indulged in : 

^ Cf. also Mrs. Lilly Grove (Mrs. J. G. Frazer), Dancing, in The Badminton 
Library, 1895, p. 280. 

^ Thomas Heywood's Dramatic Works, vol. ii., pp. 96-98. Ed. Pearson, 
1874. (I have uniformly put all the names of the dances into italics.) 



THE SIXGING GAxMES OF CHILDREN 26 1 

" Enter Nicke and Ienkin, Iacke Sliime, Roger Brickbat, 
.. with Countrey Wenches, and two or three Musitians. 

Slime. Come, what shall it be? Rogero? 

Ien. Rogero^ no ; we will dance. The Beginning of the World. 

SiSLY. I loiie no dance so well as J^ohn^ come kisse niee now. 

Nic. I that haue ere now deseru'd a cushion, call for the 
Cushion Dance. 

Roger. For my part I like nothing so wel as Tom Tyler. 

Ienk. No, wee'l haue the Htniting of the Fox. 

Slime. The Ha}\ the Hay^ there 's nothing like the Hay. 

Nic. I haue saide, I do say, and I will say againe. 

Ienk. Euery man agree to haue it as Nicke says. 

All. Content. 

Nic. It hath bene, it now is, and it shall be. 

SiSLY. What, Master Nichlas, what ? 

Nic. PiLt on your smocke a Monday. 

Ien. So the dance will come cleanly off : come, for God's 
sake agree to something ; if you like not that, put it to the Mu- 
sitians, or let me speake for all, and wee'l haue Sellenger's Roimd. 

All. That, that, that." 

In the fine old song, Come, Lassies and Lads, we find the 
same love of dancing. 

)v^*' You lassies and lads take leave of your dads. 
And away to the May-pole hie, 
There every he has got him a she, 
And the minstrel 's standing by : 
For Willy has got his Gill, and Johnny has his Joan, 
To jig it, jig it, jig it, jig it, jig it up and down. 

" * Begin,' says Hal, — ' Aye, aye,' says Mall, 
' We '11 lead up Packingtoiis Pound' ; 
No, no,' says Noll, and so says Doll, 
' We '11 first have Sellengers Round.' 
Then every man began to foot it round about. 
And every girl did jet it, jet it, jet it in and out. 



262 THE STUDY OF MAN 

" Then after an hour they went to a bow'r, 
And played for ale and cakes, 
And kisses too, until they were due — 
The lassies held the stakes. 
The girls did then begin to quarrel with the men, 
And bade them take their kisses back, 
And give them their own again. 

" Now there they did stay the whole of the day, 
And tired the fiddler quite 
With dancing and play, without any pay, 
From morning until night. 
They told the fiddler then, they 'd pay him for his play, 
And each a twopence, twopence, twopence. 
Gave him, and went away." 

One of the most favourite games of young men and 
maidens in the Middle Ages was that known as " Barley 
Break," or ''.The Last Couple in Hell.;' 

" The spring clade all in gladness 
Doth laugh at winter's sadness, 
And to the bagpipe's sound 
The maids tread out their ground. 

" Fy, then, why are we musing. 
Youth's sweet delight refusing? 
Say, dainty nymph, and speak. 
Shall we play Barley Break ? " 

— Old Song. 

It appears from Sir Philip Sidney's description in the 
Arcadia tha.t the game was played by three couples, each of 
a youth and a maid, one couple standing at each end of the 
area and the third remaining in the centre. The oblong 
playing-ground was divided transversely into three plots, of 
which the central one was called " hell." The mating was 



THE SINGING GAMES OF CHILDREN 263 

determined by lot, and the last pair mated were obliged to 
take the central plot or " hell," and saluted each other by 
a kiss. This pair were required to pursue with joined hands, 
while the others were at liberty to separate. Any maid 
caught replaced the maid, and any youth, the youth of the 
central couple. 

" She went abroad, thereby, 
At Barley-brake her sweet, swift foot to try . . . 
A field they goe, where manie lookers be . . . 
Then couples three be streight allotted there. 
They of both ends the middle two doe fiie. 
The two that in mid-place, Hell called were, 
Must striue with waiting foot, and watching eye 
To catch of them, and them to hell to beare, 
That they, as well as they, Hell may supplye : 
Like some which seek to salue their blotted name 
With others blot, till all doe taste of shame. 

*' There may you see, soone as the middle two 
Doe coupled towards either couple make. 
They false and fearfull, doe their hands undoe, 
Brother his brother, friend doth friend forsake, 
Heeding himselfe, cares not how fellow doe, 
But of a stranger mutuall helpe doth take : 
( As periur'd cowards in aduersitie 
Vwith sight of feare from friends to fremb'd doe fiie." ^ 

Whatever may have been the origin of this now obsolete 
game, it was played in the seventeenth century for purely 
exhilarating amusement for both sexes, in the same way as 
lawn tennis was until very recently. 

In looking through a large collection of the singing games 
of children, it will be obvious, as Mr. Newell, the well- 

' Sir Philip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke s Arcadia (" now the sixt 
time pvblished " ), London, 1623, lib. i., p. 87, " Song of Lamon." 



264 THE STUDY OF MAN 

known American folklorist points out, that many were not 
composed by children. 

^ They were formerly played, as in many countries they are 
still played, by persons of marriageable age, or even by mature 
men and women. The truth is that in past centuries all the 
world, judged by our present standard, seems to have been a lit- 
tle childish. The maids of honour of Queen Elizabeth's day, if 
we may credit the poets, were devoted to the game of tag, and 
conceived it a waste of time to pass in idleness hours which 
might be employed in that pleasure, with which Diana and her 
nymphs were supposed to amuse themselves." * 

Court dames and cottage damsels alike played these sing- \ 
ing games in the breezy days of Good Queen Bess. How^i^"^ 
the puritanical glacier of a later time swept away the rich- 
ness of life and left bare the naked rock-bed of stern reality, 
we of the present generation know only too well. 

Those unconscious keepers of archaic archives — our village 
children — have retained some of the romping games of the 

grown ups " of '* Merrie England " ; but also in some of 
the singing games, played by the roadside, can we trace de- 
generate and fragmentary survivals of the social life, cere- 
monies, and religious practices of our savage ancestors. 

This is not the place to enter into a disquisition on danc- 
ing, much as I should like to, for the subject is one of 
peculiar interest and of deep significance. Many valuable 
contributions to the subject have been made by Mrs. J. G. 
Frazer,^ Herbert Spencer,^ and others, amongst whom I 
would specially mention Grosse,* who has eloquently argued 
that dancing has been no mere pastime, " La joie de vivre, 

' W. W. Newell, Games and Songs of American Children, New York, 1884, p. 5. 
' Mrs. Lilly Grove, The Badminton Library : Dancing, 1895. 
^ Herbert Spencer, " Professional Institutions : iii., Dancer and Musician," 
The Contemporary Review, Ixviii., 1895, p. 1 14. 
■* E. Grosse, Die Ajifdnge der Kunst, 1894. 



THE SINGING GAMES OF CHILDREN 2O5 

ohe\ ohe','* not even solely a magical pantomime, but that 
it has had a civilising effect by making numbers of people 
meet in amity and move rhythmically in accord. On this 
co-ordinating effect of the tribal dance Grosse lays great 
stress, and believes that it has been one of the chief factors 
in the elevation of man. With Herbert Spencer, he delves 
yet deeper and sees in the vigorous rhythmical movements 
the rationale of dancing. 

I do not intend making an analysis or a classification of 
the singing games of children, but will content myself with 
taking a few that have interested me. The first two, " The 
Farmer's Den " and " When I was a Naughty Girl," ap- 
pear to be simple amusements with nothing special at the 
back of them. 

In a few instances I have given, or merely alluded to, 
games which in some cases are evidently versions of the 
same game, while in others they are similar games which 
have apparently had an independent origin. We are here 
brought face to face with a crucial question in folk-lore. 
Broadly speaking, students of folk-lore range themselves 
into two camps: the adherents of one school seek to ex- 
plain all similarities of custom or tale by borrowing or trans- 
mission ; the followers of what is sometimes called the 
anthropological school are impressed with the essential 
solidarity of mankind, and argue that under similar condi- 
tions men of a given plane of culture will do, think, and say 
very much alike. There is no need to take either extreme. 
Every instance must be studied independently, and all the 
available evidence must be collected and weighed impartially 
from both points of view before a reliable conclusion can be 
arrived at. The similarity in two or more widely separated 
districts of a complex custom or tale, is very good evidence 
in favour of borrowing, but in a simple case the matter is 
by no means easy to decide. 



266 THE STUDY OF MAN 

As an example of the distribution of two singing games 
which are so similar that they must have had a common 
origin, I will take the following. The first version was col- 
lected by my elder daughter at Auchencairn in Kirkcud- 
brightshire ; the second was given to me as coming from Basel. 
It is a far cry from South-west Scotland to Switzerland, and 
the explanation appears to be that it is an ancient Teutonic 
game. 

THE farmer's den 

The players dance in a ring, singing, round one child, who 
stands in the centre of the circle. 

\" The farmer 's in his den, the farmer 's in his den, 
For it 's oh ! my dearie, the farmer 's in his den. 

" For the farmer takes a wife, for the farmer takes a wife, 
For it 's oh ! my dearie, the farmer takes a wife." 

[The child then chooses a " wife " from the circle, who then 
goes into the ring along with the " farmer." The remainder 
again dance round, singing :] 

" For the wife takes a child, for the wife takes a child, 
For it 's oh ! my dearie, the wife takes a child." 

[The " wife " then chooses a ^' child " from the circle, and so 
on, as before.] 

" For the child takes a nurse, for the child takes a nurse, 
For it 's oh ! my dearie, the child takes a nurse." 

[Selection as before.] 

" For the nurse takes a dog, for the nurse takes a dog, 
For it 's oh ! my dearie, the nurse takes a dog." 



THE SINGING GAMES OF CHILDREN 267 

[Then they all join in singing :] 

** For we all clap the dog, for we all clap the dog, 
For it 's oh ! my dearie, we all clap the dog." 

[And while they are singing they pat the " dog's " back.] 

The Swiss game is as follows : 

The children are divided into two parties and stand oppo- 
site one another. One party, advancing, sings: 

" Once a peasant drove into the forest. Hurrah Viktoria ! 
Once a peasant drove into the forest." 

[And retreat when singing the last line.] 

[The other side advances singing :] 

** The peasant took a wife. Hurrah Viktoria ! 
The peasant took a wife. 

^* The woman took a child, Hurrah Viktoria ! 
The woman took a child. 

*' The child took a nurse, Hurrah Viktoria ! 
The child took a nurse. 

"* The nurse took a man-servant, Hurrah Viktoria ! 
The nurse took a man-servant. 

** The man-servant took a dog, Hurrah Viktoria ! 
The man-servant took a dog. 

^* The dog took a sausage, Hurrah Viktoria ! 
The dog took a sausage. 

*' The peasant separated from his wife. Hurrah Viktoria ! 
The woman separated from the child. 
The child separated from the nurse." 



268 THE STUDY OF MAN 

And so on; when saying the word " separated " the second 
party chooses a child for the first one, until only one child 
is left, who is the " sausage." They all form a circle round 
her, dancing and clapping their hands, and singing: 

" The sausage is left alone, Hurrah Viktoria ! " 

The Scottish version is evidently an abbreviated one. It 
looks, too, as if the Swiss game should commence with one 
child (the " peasant "), facing a row, and that at each stanza 
a child should pass from the latter to the former, until the 
break comes in the song when the action is reversed ; finally 
the *' sausage " alone remains. 

What appears to be merely an imitative child's singing 
game is the one known as " When I was a Naughty Girl." 

The following is a version I have collected near Cam- 
bridge, and as the ring of children marched round, following 
one another in a circle, they imitated the actions suggested 
by the words. It was a pretty little comedy to see them 
walking demurely when they were good girls, or shrugging 
their shoulders and wriggling their bodies when they were 
naughty, walking arm in arm when they were courting, and 
later dangling an imaginary baby. 

X "When I was a naughty girl, a naughty girl, a naughty girl, 
When I was a naughty girl, and this way went I." 
\_Pantomime : shrugging shoulders^ 

" When I was a good girl, a good girl, a good girl, 
When I was a good girl, and this way went I." 
\Panto7nime : folding arms a?td walki7tg soberly^ 

"When I was a teacher, a teacher, a teacher. 
When I was a teacher, and this way went I." 
\_Pa7itominie: beating time or action of whacking^ 



THE SIXGIXG GAMES OF CHILDREN 269 

**When I went a courting, a courting, a courting, 
When I went a courting, and this way went I." 
\_Pa?ito?mme : walking ar??i In arjn in pair s^ 

" When I had a baby, a baby, a baby, 
When I had a baby, and this way went I." 

\Pa7ito7nime : doubling up apro?i aiid dandling it^ 

** When my baby died, baby died, baby died, 
When my baby died, how I did cry." 
\_Panfomime : cryi^ig.'] 

** When my father beat me, father beat me, father beat me. 
When my father beat me, and this way went he." 
\Pantomijne : hitting one another ofi backs^ 

? When my father died, father died, father died, 
\When my father died, how I did laugh." 
\Pant07ni771e : laughi7ig^ 

Mr. Newell ' says that this game is closely paralleled in 
France and Italy, and even on the extreme limits of Euro- 
pean Russia; but wherever there are children, they will 
imitate the doings of their elders, and while in some games 
we may lay stress upon their geographical distribution, in 
others this probably is of no moment. 

Probably an analogous singing pantomime is the follow- 
ing, which was given to me by a German girl. The children 
form a ring, and as they sing they make appropriate 
gestures. 

* Would you know how the peasant, 
Would you know how the peasant. 
Sows his oats ? 

** Look ! like this the peasant. 
Look ! like this the peasant. 
Sows his oats in the field." 
> Loc. cit., p. 88. 



2/0 THE STUDY OF MAN 

The double rhymes are repeated for : *' Reaping oats," 
"Threshing oats," and '* Winnowing oats." 

At first sight this game appears to be similar to a common 
English rhyming game known as ** Oats, Beans, and Bar- 
ley " ; but a further study of the latter rather leads one to 
the supposition that it had originally a magical significance. 

I have seen the following game played by the children of 
Girton, a village near Cambridge, and I would like to take 
this opportunity of thanking Mrs. Lawrence, of the Rectory, 
for the help she has given me in collecting the games of 
that village. 

The girls who played it walked round in a circle, and 
they made appropriate gestures while singing the second 
verse in illustration of the words of the song. After all 
had given one stamp of the feet and a clap of the hands, 
and had turned round, they formed a ring during the sing- 
ing of the third verse ; two enter this and kiss one another 
kneeling, while the encircling chorus sing the last verse. 

" Oats and beans and barley grow, 
You or I or anyone know, 
You or I or anyone know 
Where oats and beans and barley grow.' 

** First the farmer sows his seed, 
Stands awhile and takes his heed [or ease],' 
Stamps his foot and claps his hand. 
And turns around to view the land. 

'''Waiting for a partner, 
Open the ring, 
And take one in. 
Waiting for a partner. 

* This verse evidently means that no one knows how the corn grows. 

' The one rhymes and the other does not, but the children incline to " ease." 



THE SINGING GAMES OF CHILDREN 2/1 

" Now you 're married you must obey, 
You must be true to all you say, 
You must be kind and very good, 
And help your wife to chop the wood." 

Mr. Newell has collected several examples from the United 
States. 

" In the early part of the century," he informs us, " the essen- 
tial stanza went thus in New Hampshire : 

*' ' Thus my father sows his seed, 
Stands erect, and takes his ease, 
Stamps his foot, and claps his hands, 
Whirls about, and thus he stands.* 

" The Swedish quatrain is nearly the same : 

" ' I had a father, he sowed this way, 

And when he had done, he stood this way ; 

He stamped with his foot, he clapped with his hand, 

He turned about, he was so glad.' 

" The French rhyme, by its exact correspondence, proves the 
great antiquity of the formula: 

" ' Qui veut ouir, qui veut savoir, 
Comment on seme I'aveine ? 
Mon pere la semait ainsi, 
Puis il se reposait a demi ; 
Frappe du pied, puis de la main, 
Un petit tour pour ton voisin ; 

Aveine, aveine, aveine, 
Que le Bon Dieu t'amene ! ' " 

Fauriel, in his history of Provencal literature, alludes to 
this song, and considers it to be derived from, and to repre- 
sent, choral dances of the Greek rustics of Massil (Mar- 
seilles), He says (I again quote from Newell, p. 83): 

" The words of the song described an action, a succession of 
different situations, which the dancers reproduced by their ges- 



2/2 THE STUDY OF MAN 

tures. The song was divided into many stanzas, and terminated 
by a refrain alike for all. The dancers acted or gesticulated only 
to imitate the action or situation described in each stanza ; at the 
refrain they took each other by the hand and danced a round, 
with a movement more or less lively. There are everywhere 
popular dances derived from these, which more or less resemble 
them. ... I remember to have seen in Provence some of these 
dances, of which the theme seems to be very ancient — one, among 
the rest, imitating successively the habitual actions of a poor 
labourer, working in his field, sowing his wheat or oats, mowing, 
and so on to the end. Each of the numerous couplets of the 
song was sung with a slow and dragging motion, as if to imitate 
the fatigue and the sullen air of the poor labourer ; and the re- 
frain was of a very lively movement, the dancers then giving way 
to all their gaiety." 

The French, Italian, and Spanish versions of this game 
also represent a series of actions, sowing, reaping, etc., of 
which our rhyme has retained only one stanza. 

We must always keep apart in our minds games which 
have filtered down from adults to children, and those which 
the latter may be supposed to have invented themselves. 
At first sight one would have imagined that " Oats, pease, 
beans, and barley grows," as played on English village 
greens or by children in the United States, was merely an 
imitative game, analogous to " keeping house," playing 
with dolls, playing at soldiers, and the like; but we find " it 
is properly a dance rather of young people than of children. 
We know it was an ancient dance, as "it was played by 
Froissart (born 1337) and by Rabelais (born 1483); while the 
general resemblance of the song in the countries of Sweden, 
Germany, British Islands, France, Spain, Italy, and Sicily 
proves that in the five centuries through which we thus 
trace it, even the words have undergone little change." 

It is not impossible that it was merely a game of playing 



THE SINGING GAMES OF CHILDREN 273 

at work indulged in by young people, but another explana- 
tion has been suggested by Newell ' which has much to 
recommend it. He says: 

" The lines of the French refrain, 

' Oats, oats, oats, 
May the good God prosper you ! ' 

and the general form of the dance suggest that the song may 
probably have had a religious symbolic meaning, and formed 
part of rustic festivities designed to promote the fertility of the 
fields, an object which undoubtedly formed the original purpose 
of the May festival. . . . That such a song, danced in sowing 
time, and representing the progress and abundance of the crop, 
should be supposed to bring a blessing on the labours of the 
year, is quite in conformity with what we know of popular be- 
lief, ancient and modern." 

Another game, called " Threading the Needle," affords 
us, according to Newell, a further illustration of this belief. 

It is played in America and England by a chain of child- 
ren passing under the arch formed by the uplifted joined 
hands of two other children, till one of the chain is caught 
by the dropping of the arms. The child then makes a 
choice of some alternative, which decides to which of the 
two children who make the arch she is to attach herself. 
When all are caught there is a " tug-of-war. " 

Mr. Newell informs us that the name " Threading the 
Needle" is still applied, in a district of Central France, 
to a dance in which many hundred persons take part, in 
which from time to time the pair who form the head of the 
row raise their arms to allow the line to pass through, coil- 
ing and winding like a great serpent. When a French 
savant asked the peasants of La Chatre why they performed 
this dance, the answer was, " To make the hemp grow." 

' Loc. cit., p. 81. 
18 



2/4 THE STUDY OF MAN 

This apparently inconsequent reply of the French peasant, 
who, judging from the locality, may very well have belonged 
to the non-Aryan, dark, round-headed race of Central 
France, is very significant, and takes us back to an attitude 
of mind that is difficult for us to realise, but which is still 
exemplified by many living savage peoples. 

I have myself seen,^ at the beginning of the rainy season 
in Torres Straits, a dance performed by natives whose heads 
were enveloped in large masks, which consisted of imitations 
of a human face resting on a crocodile's head and sur- 
mounted by a large figure of a saw-fish. It was called the 
" Saw-fish Dance," and was designed to bring good luck in 
the approaching fishing season. I have also seen these 
natives in their dances represent the actions of ordinary life, 
but sometimes in a slightly conventionalised manner, such 
as planting yams, picking up pearl-shell from the bottom of 
the sea, stamping out a fire, etc. 

It is now recognised by anthropologists that ceremonies 
which are performed in connection with agriculture, fish- 
ing, hunting, and the like, are mainly magical rites, or rather 
magical pantomimes. The conventional realism (if the 
phrase may be permitted) of these performances ensures the 
success of the undertaking, mainly by the supposed sympathy 
between the mimetic action and the real operation. 

* A. C. Haddon, " The Secular and Ceremonial Dances of Torres Straits," 
Internat. Arch, fiir Ethnogr., vi., 1893, p. 131. 



CHAPTER XII 

LONDON BRIDGE'' : FOUNDATION SACRIFICE 

LONDON BRIDGE is broken down, 
London Bridge is broken down, 
London Bridge is broken down, 
My fair lady. 

" Build it up with bricks and mortar. 
Build it up with bricks and mortar, 
Build it up with bricks and mortar, 
My fair lady. 

" Bricks and mortar will mould away, \j'epeat three times\ 
My fair lady. 

" Build it up with penny loaves, \repeat three ti?nes] 
My fair lady. 

** Penny loaves will be stolen away, [repeat three twies] 
My fair lady. 

" Build it up with gold and silver, [repeat three tunes'] 
My fair lady. 

" Gold and silver will be stolen away, [repeat three times] 
My fair lady. 

" Send a man to watch all night, [repeat three times] 
My fair lady. 

275 



276 THE STUDY OF MAN 

" Suppose the man should fall asleep, [repeat three times\ 
My fair lady. 

" Set a dog to bark all night, [repeat three times'] 
My fair lady. 

" Give him nuts to crack all night, [repeat three times] 
My fair lady. 

" Suppose the nuts should all be bad, [repeat three times] 
My fair lady. 

*' Set a horse to gallop all night, [repeat three times] 
My fair lady." 

These are the words of a singing game, which I saw 
played by a group of girls at the village of Barrington, near 
Cambridge. Variants of this game occur all over the 
country; and in Ireland it is recorded from Belfast and 
Cork. 

A few of these variants only can be noted, and these very 
shortly. In Belfast the rhyme begins : 

" London Bridge is broken down, 
Grant said little bee ^ ; 
London Bridge is broken down, 
Where I 'd be." 

A common London version runs thus: 

" London Bridge is broken down, 
Dance o'er my lady lee ; 
London Bridge is broken down. 
With a gay lady. 

** How shall we build it up again ? 
Dance o'er my lady lee ; 

^ Another informant gives the refrain, " Grand says the little Dee." 



'' LONDON BRIDGE'' 2/7 

How shall we build it up again ? 
With a gay lady. 

" Silver and gold will be stole away, 
Etc., etc., etc. 

" Build it up with iron and steel, 
Etc., etc., etc. 

" Iron and steel will bend and bow, 
Etc., etc., etc. 

" Build it up with wood and clay, 
Etc., etc., etc. 

'* Wood and clay will wash away, 
Etc., etc., etc. 

" Build it up with stone so strong, 
Dance o'er my lady lee ; 
Huzza ! 't will last for ages long, 
With a gay lady." 

In some versions the watchman is replaced by a prisoner; 
after the " penny loaves " verse we find in Hampshire: 

" What have this poor prisoner done, 
Prisoner done, prisoner done. 
What have this poor prisoner done, 
My fair lady ? 

'' Stole my watch, and lost my key. 
Lost my key, lost my key. 
Stole my watch, and lost my key. 
My fair lady. 

" Off to prison you must go. 
You must go, you must go, 
Off to prison you must go, 
My fair lady." 



2/8 THE STUDY OF MAN 

In one Kent variant we find : 

A"" What has this poor prisoner done ? 

Stole my watch and broke my chain. 
How many pounds will set him free ^ 

Three hundred pounds will set him free. 
The half of that I have not got. 

Then off to prison he must go." 

The game is variously played. It is now generally played 
like ** Oranges and Lemons," only there is now no ** tug- 
of-war " at the end. Often two children join hands to form 
an arch, the remainder form a long line by holding to each 
other's dresses or waists, and run under. Those who are 
running under sing the first verse ; the two who form the 
arch sing the second and alternate verses. At the words, 
" What has this poor prisoner done ? " the girls who form 
the arch catch one of the line (generally the last one). 
When the last verse is sung the prisoner is taken a little dis- 
tance away, and the game begins again. 

At Barrington the children formed two parallel advancing 
and retreating lines, and finished by all dancing round in a 
circle. The same occurs in Berkshire. 

Mrs. Gomme in her Traditional Games of England, Scot- 
land, and Ireland analyses this game in a masterly manner, 
and shows that ** the special feature of the rhymes is that 
considerable difficulty occurs in the building of the bridge 
by ordinary means, but without exactly suggesting that ex- 
traordinary means are to be adopted." The London ver- 
sion alone faithfully reflects an actual building episode. 
The game then diverges into two groups, that with a 
watchman and that with a prisoner. 

The watchman incident approaches nearer to modern 
facts, and is therefore probably a comparatively recent 
modification, since the prisoner, as we shall see, is an unex- 



''LONDON BRIDGE'' 2'jg 

plained factor. A watchman children can understand, and 
then the game is occasionally prolonged in the endeavour 
to keep him awake and alive to his duties ; this comes out 
clearly in a Berkshire version : 

"J^We '11 set a man to watch at night. 
^ Suppose the man should fall asleep ? 
Give him a pipe of tobacco to smoke. 

Suppose the pipe should fall and break ? 
We '11 give him a bag of nuts to crack. 

Suppose the nuts were rotten and bad? 
We '11 give him a horse to gallop around." 

And the children dance round in a ring in imitation of the 
horse. 

The prisoner incident is, according to Mrs. Gomme, more 
common than the watchman. In only one case (Shropshire) 
is the prisoner ransomed ; in the others he is sent to prison. 

What does this sudden appearance of a prisoner indicate ? 

The two following modern Greek songs very vividly 
supply the answer: 

' THE STOICHEION OF THE BRIDGE. 
(Peloponnesos.) 

" A bridge across the Tricha broad, with sixty-two wide arches. 
All day long do they build the bridge : by night it falls to pieces. 
And sadly weep the 'prentices, and sorely grieve the masons. 
A little birdie went and perched upon the arch i' th' middle ; 
She sang not as a birdie sings, nor was her note the swallow's : 
* Without a human Stoicheion the bridge can ne'er be founded. 
It neither must an idiot be, a madman, nor a pauper, 
But Ghiorghi's wife it needs must be, Ghiorghi's, the master 

mason.' 
Then hasten all the 'prentices, and off they set to fetch her. 



280 THE STUDY OF MAN 

* Thine hour be happy, Ghiorghiana ! ' ' My boys, I *m glad to 

see you ! ' 

* Unbind and swaddle fresh thy babe, and of thy milk now give 

him ; 
Thy husband, Ghiorghi, he is sick, and thou with us must hasten.' 
As they were going on the road, and on the road did journey, 
' Three sisters once were we [she cried] and Stoicheia we '11 all be ! 
Of Korphos one 's a Stoicheion ; the other of Zitouni ; 
And I, the third and fairest one, o* th' bridge across the Tricha. 
And as my eyes are streaming now, may wayfarers stream over ! ' '* 

Here the human sacrifice must be provided by the master 
mason ; in the following song the victim is selected by a 
method of casting lots. In Legrand's New Greek Diction- 
ary, stoicheion is defined, amongst other meanings, as the 
genius or spirit of a place. In this instance the idea appears 
to be that to enable the bridge to last it must be endowed 
with a living spirit. 

THE BRIDGE OF ADANA. 

( Kappadocia . ) 

" All day long did they build the piers ; by night they fell in ruins. 

* Come now and let us branches cut ! come now will we chop 

faggots ; 
Let us give up one soul of us that firm the bridge be builded.* 
They sat them down, and chopped away, the two-and-forty masons. 
Then fell from Yianni's hand his axe, unfortunate Yiannaki ! 
'Yiannaki, go, thy goodwife fetch, if thou thy head would'st 

keep thee ! ' 

* If I should now my goodwife give, I yet can find another ; 
But if I my own head give up, I while I 'm young shall leave her!' ** 

So they fetch the poor wife, who is " vigilant and quick 
at bath and washing." The husband drops his ring down 
the excavations and induces his wife to fetch it up. 



FOUNDATION SACRIFICE 28 1 

" Then down goes she, and down goes she, steps forty-two 

descends she, 
And fall upon her as she goes of stones a thousand litras^ 
And throw they down upon her, too, of earth a thousand 

spadefuls." 

In her dying lament she exclaims : 

" * Hear thou my words, Yiannaki mine, let not the world rejoice 

thee ; 
Three only sisters once were we, we were three sisters only ; 
The one did build the Danube's bridge, the second the Euphrates', 
And I, I too, the murdered one, the bridge build of Adana.' " 

Miss Lucy M. J. Garnett, in her Greek Folk Poesy, from 
which book these two songs are taken, points out that nu- 
merous stories of foundation sacrifices are told in Celtic 
countries. In Adamnan's Life of Colmnba ^ we read: 

^ * Columkille said, then, to his people, ' It would be well for us 
that our roots should pass into the earth here.' And he said to 
them, ' It is permitted to you that some of you go under the 
earth of this island to consecrate it.' Odhran arose quickly, and 
thus spake : ' If you accept me,' said he, ' I am ready for that.* 
'O Odhran,' said Columkille, 'you shall receive the reward of 
this : no request shall be granted to any one at my tomb unless 
he first ask of thee.' Odhran then went to heaven. He (Colum- 
kille) founded the church of Hy then." 

What strange methods the missionaries had in those days ! 

There are many traditions still current in the Highlands 
regarding such sacrifices. One of these relates that when the 
workmen had assembled to lay the foundations of Tigh-an- 
Torr, in Western Ross-shire, they caught the first person 
who chanced to pass and buried him under the foundation- 

' The Life of St. Columha, Founder of Hy ; W)-itten by Adamnan, Ninth 
Abbot of that Monastery. Ed by W. Reeves, Dublin, 1857, p. 203. 



282 THE STUDY OF MAN 

stone. On laying the foundations of Redcastle, a red-haired 
girl was buried alive under the stone. 

As there is so much evidence of this ghastly custom in 
the British Islands, there is no need for us to seek for 
further confirmation in European practice. One instance 
will suffice. So late as 1843, i^ Germany, when a new 
bridge was built at Halle, a notion was abroad among the 
people that a child was wanted to be built into the founda- 
tion. In Africa and the far East we find precisely the same 
custom ; but somehow we rather expect that sort of thing 
to be done by barbarians and savages, forgetting all the 
while that it was not so very long ago when our own ances- 
tors did the very same. 

"So recently as 1872 there was a scare in Calcutta when 
Hooghly Bridge was being constructed. The natives then got 
hold of the idea that the Mother Ganges, indignant at being 
bridged, had at last consented to submit to the insult on con- 
dition that each pier of the structure was founded on a layer of 
children's heads. Formerly, in Siam, when a new city gate was 
being erected, it was customary for a number of officers to lie in 
wait and seize the first four or eight persons who happened to 
pass by, and who were then buried alive under the gate-posts to 
serve as guardian angels ; and there is a tradition about London 
Bridge itself, that the stones were bespattered with the blood of 
little children. Fitzstephen, in his well-known account of Lon- 
don of the twelfth century, mentions that when the Tower was 
built the mortar was tempered with the blood of beasts." * 

The substitution of animal for human sacrifice is too well 
recognised in comparative religion to need substantiating; 
for example, a chicken sometimes replaces a girl as a founda- 
tion sacrifice in Borneo. 

^ A. B. Gomme, Traditional Games, pp. 346, 347 ; further illustrations of 
this custom will be found in G. L. Gomme, Early Village Life, p. 2g, and E. 
B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, i., pp. 104-108 



FOUNDATION SACRIFICE 283 

It seems that Professor Leon Pineau read a paper before 
a Congress in Paris in the spring of 1897 on one of the most 
popular of French " rondes,'' which commences thus in 
some locaUties: 

" Sur le pent de Nantes, 
Sur le pent de Nantes, 
Un bal est affiche 

Elsewhere it runs : 

" Sur le pont du Nord, 
Sur le pont du Nord, 
Un bal y est donne." 

Of this there are many variants, but the theme is the same 
in all. M. Pineau argued that this was related to " a ritual 
dance on the occasion of a human sacrifice to the divinities 
of the water," and attributed this traditional song to a 
Celtic origin. A critic * suggests that this was more prob- 
ably a Gothic rather than a Celtic song. 

Newell ^ has also studied this game, and he has collected 
some foreign contemporary and mediaeval games which he 
thinks are variants. He describes the American version of 
the game as follows : 

" Two players, by their uplifted hands, form an arch, repre- 
senting the bridge, under which passes the train of children, 
each clinging to the garments of the predecessor, and hurrying 
to get safely by. The last of the train is caught by the lowered 
arms of the guardians of the bridge, and asked, ' Will you have 
a diamond necklace or a gold pin?' *a rose or a cabbage?' hx 
some equivalent question. The keepers have already privately 
agreed which of the two each of these objects shall represent, 
and according to the prisoner's choice he is placed behind one or 

^ S. B., " Apropos d'une Ronde enfantine," La Science Sociale, xxiii., 1897, 
p. 109. ' Loc. cit., p. 204. 



284 THE STUDY OF AIAN 

the other. When all are caught, the game ends with a ' tug-of- 
war,' the two sides pulling against each other, and the child who 
lets go and breaks the line is pointed at and derided." 

In Suabia, the two keepers of the " Golden Bridge " are 
called respectively the " Devil " and the '* Angel," and the 
object is to decide who shall be devils and who angels. 

In France the game is known as ** Heaven and Hell." 
The children who have made a good choice after the selec- 
tion is finished pursue the devils, making the signs of horns 
with fingers extended from the forehead. 
<\ln Italy the name of the sport is * ' Open the Gates. ' ' The 
gates are those of the Inferno and of Paradise ; St. Peter is 
the keeper of one, St. Paul of the other. The children 
choose between wine and water; but when the destiny of 
the last child is decided, the two girls who represent the 
keepers of the bridge break their arch of lifted hands, and 
move in different directions, followed by their subjects, 
** while the cries and shrieks of the players condemned to 
the Inferno contrast with the pathetic songs and sweet 
cadences of those destined to the happiness of Paradise." 

The game is mentioned by Rabelais (about A.D. 1533), 
under the name of the " Fallen Bridge." 

In German versions the keepers are called '* Devil and 
Angel," " King and Emperor," or " Sun and Moon." 

In this latter form the game has been one of the few kept 
up by the Germans of Pennsylvania, who call it the ** Bridge 
of Holland " ('' Die Hollandisch Briick "). 

As to the origin of this remarkable game, our citations 
have already made it clear that one of its features consists 
in a representation of the antagonism of celestial and infer- 
nal powers, and the final decision by which each soul is 
assigned a place on the one side or the other. 

It was universally believed in the Middle Ages that the 



FOUNDATION SACRIFICE 285 

soul, separated from the body, had to cross a dangerous 
bridge, and subsequently undergo a literal weighing in the 
balance, according to the result of which its destiny was de- 
cided. It is in the nature of things that children conversant 
with these ideas should have dramatised them in their sports. 
We see no reason with the German writers to go back to 
ancient northern mythology ; nor do we find any ground for 
believing that our game is more likely to be of Teutonic 
than Romance descent. 

An Irish domestic from Waterford gives the following ac- 
count of the game : 

An actual bridge was built up with sticks and boards, and 
surrounded by the ring of players, dressed in costume; 
without stood the ''devil." Little girls in variously 
coloured dresses represented the angels. 

The repeated fall and rebuilding of the bridge was acted 
out, as described in the verses of the song. This fall was 
ascribed to the malice of the devil, who ruined it during the 
night (watching it, said the narrator, from the top of an 
ash-tree during the day). 

The imprisonment of the child enclosed by the arms of 
the leaders was acted in a noteworthy fashion. A chain 
was taken and wrapped round the child in the form of a ser- 
pent (for the devil is a serpent, said the reciter); the captive 
was taken to a hut (representing apparently the entrance to 
the Inferno) built by the sea. Meantime, the rest of the 
train called on their leader for help ; but he answered, " The 
devil has five feet, and thirteen eyes, and is stronger than 
I! " The performance lasted five hours, and the name of 
the edifice was the " Devil's Bridge." 

)^ In this Irish game tests were employed to determine 
whether the captive should belong to the devil or not. One 
of these was the ability to walk on a straight line drawn on 
the ground. 



286 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Newell sums up his conclusions as follows: 

»^f' We suspect, however, that that part of the sport which relates 
to the warfare of good and evil powers does not belong to the 
original idea, but that a still more primitive game has taken on 
an ending which was common to many amusements in the Middle 
Ages. The central point of the whole is the repeated downfall 
of the structure. Now there is a distinct mythological reason for 
such a representation. In early times no edifice was so important 
as a bridge, which renders intercourse possible between districts 
heretofore separated. Hence the sanctity attributed in mediaeval 
times to the architects of bridges. The devil, or (in more 
ancient guise) the elemental spirit of the land, who detests any 
interference with the solitude he loves, has an especial antipathy 
to bridges. His repeated and successful attempts to interfere 
with such a structure, until he is bought off with an offering like 
that of Iphigenia, are recorded in legends which attach to nu- 
merous bridges in Europe. It is on such supernatural opposition 
that the English form of the game appears to turn. The struc- 
ture, which is erected in the daytime, is ruined at night ; every 
form of material — wood, stone, and gold, is tried in vain ; the 
vigilance of the watchman, or of the cock and the dog — guardian 
animals of the darkness — is insufficient to protect the edifice 
from the attack of the offended spirits. 

*' The child arrested seems to be originally regarded as the 
price paid for allowing the structure to stand. In times when all 
men's thoughts were concerned about the final judgment, a differ- 
ent turn was given to the sport — namely, whether the prisoner 
should belong to the devils or to the angels, who wage perpetual 
warfare, and dispute with each other the possession of departed 
souls. Finally, in quite recent days, religious allusions were ex- 
cluded, and the captive, now accused of mere theft, was sentenced 
to be locked up, not in the Inferno, but in a commonplace jail " 
(p. 2Il). 

This mystical explanation of Mr. Newell's is extremely 



FOUNDATION SACRIFICE 28/ 

ingenious, but there does not appear to be any good evi- 
dence to connect the foreign games, which look rather like 
degraded ** miracle plays," with the English ** London 
Bridge" game; further, as Mrs. Gomme acutely points out, 
the tug-of-war incident does not come into the English 
game. 



CHAPTER XIII 

'' ni^AW A FAIL OF WATER'' : WATER WORSHIF 

THIS game is usually played by eight girls, two of whom 
face one another and stretch out their arms towards 
each other and join hands. Two others do the same, the 
four girls thus making a cross with their arms. They see- 
saw backwards and forwards, and sing a song, the following 
version of which is taken from Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes, 
Games, cclxxxvii. : 



'^ Draw a pail of water 
^ For my lady's daughter: 

My father 's a king and my mother 's a queen; 

My two little sisters are dressed in green, 

Stamping grass and parsley, 

Marigold leaves and daisies. 

One rush, two rush, 

Pray thee, fine lady, come under my bush." 

One girl gets inside the enclosing arms, and they repeat 
the song until all four have '' popped under," when they 
' jog " up and down till they fall on the ground. 

Sometimes only two girls join hands, or the four may 
form a square with their extended arms, which the}^ sway 
backwards and forwards, singing the lines. Two arms are 
then raised, and one girl comes under; this is repeated till 

28S 



''DRAIV A PAIL OF WATER" 289 

all four girls have entered the square, then their arms en- 
circle each other's waists, and they dance round. 

Halliwell ' describes a different action from any of these. 
A string of children, hand in hand, stand in a row. A child 
stands in front of them as leader; two other children form 
an arch, holding both of the hands of the other. The 
string of children pass under the arch, the last of whom is 
taken captive by the two holding hands. The verses are 
repeated until all are taken. 

A Belfast version of the song, collected by Mr. W. H. 
Patterson,^ is as follows: 

" Sift the lady's oaten meal, sift it into flour, 

Put it in a chest of drawers and let it lie an hour. 

One of my rush, 

Two of my rush, 
Please, young lady, come under my bush. 
My bush is too high, my bush is too low; 
Please, young lady, come under my bough. 
Stir up the dumpling, stir up the dumpling." 

It would be tedious to enumerate the many variants of 
the song, but the following is a plausible restoration com- 
pounded out of fifteen versions by Mrs. Gomme in her 
Traditional Gaines : 

" Draw a pail of water 
For a lady's daughter; 

Her father 's a king, her mother 's a queen, 
Her two little sisters are dressed in green; 
Stamping grass and parsley, 
Marigold leaves and daisies: 
Sift the lady's oatmeal, sift it into flour, 
Put it in a chestnut tree, let it lie an hour: 

^ Nursery Rhymes, p. 63. 

' A. B. Gomme, Tradit. Games, i,, p. 103. 
19 



290 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Give a silver pin and a gold ring. 
One and a hush! two and a rush! 
Pray, young lady, pop under a bush: 
My bush is too high, my bush is too low; 
Please, young lady, come under my bough." 

A see-sawing movement in the game probably represents 
the raising of water from a well. The incidents may be 
grouped as follows : 

(i) Drawing water from a well. 

(2) For a devotee at the well. 

(3) Collecting flowers for dressing the well. 

(4) Making a cake for presentation. 

(5) Gifts to the well (according to some versions, a silver 
pin, gold ring, and probably a garter). 

(6) Command of silence. 

(7) The presence of the devotee at the sacred bush. 

It can be by no mere chance that all of these are incidents 
of primitive well-worship. 

The " dressing " or adorning of wells by means of gar- 
lands occurred at Bonchurch, in the Isle of Wight, where on 
St. Boniface's Day the well was decorated with chaplets of 
flowers/ It is, however, rare in England, except in the 
western counties, North Lancashire and Westmoreland, 
and especially on the borders.^ Derbyshire, Staffordshire, 
Worcestershire, and Shropshire comprise the main region of 
garland-dressing, and the practice has frequently been de- 
scribed. Mr. Gomme points out that in Worcestershire and 
Staffordshire the custom is simple ; in Derbyshire and Shrop- 
shire other practices occur in connection with the well-dress- 
ing. Garland-dressing, though found in the eastern part of 
the latter county, is almost entirely absent from the western, 

^ Tompkins, History of the Isle of Wight, ii., p. 121. 
^ Henderson, Folk-lore of the Northern Counties, p. 2. 



''DRAW A PAIL OF WATER" 29! 

where wishing and healing wells are found/ On the hill- 
side at Rorrington Green, in the parish of Chirbury, is a 
Halliwell, or Holy Well, at which a wake was celebrated on 
Ascension Day. The well was adorned with a bower of 
green boughs, rushes, and flowers, and a Maypole was set 
up. The people " used to walk round the hill with fife and 
drum and fiddle, dancing and frolicking as they went." 
They threw pins into the well to bring good luck and to 
preserve them from being bewitched, and they also drank 
some of the water. Cakes were also eaten ; they were 
round, flat buns, from three to four inches across, sweet- 
ened, spiced, and marked with a cross, and they were sup- 
posed to bring good luck if kept. The wake is said to have 
been discontinued about the year 1832 or 1834.'' 

At the village of Girton, near Cambridge, a game which is 
evidently the same is called " A Lump of Sugar." 

N " Grind your mother's flour, 
Three sacks an hour, 
One in a rush, 
Two in a crush, 
Pray, old lady, creep under the bush." 

Mrs. Lawrence describes the game as follows : The girls 
form into sets of four, those facing one another join hands 
and sway backwards and forwards while singing. At " Pray, 
old lady," etc., the right and left arms of one couple are 
raised over the head of one of the opposite couple and 
dropped behind her back, thus enclosing her in a ring. This 
is repeated till all are, so to speak, inside the ring. They 
then jump round shouting, " A lump of sugar," till they 
are tired. 

The association of sugar with this game puzzled me very 

' Miss C. S. Burne, Shropshire Folk-lore, p. 414. 
''' Loc. cit., p. 434. 



292 THE STUDY OF MAN 

much till I came across the following four examples of 
drinking sugar-water at holy wells. The use of oatmeal in 
the first custom coincides with the versions, " Sift the lady's 
oaten meal, sift it into flour" (Belfast), and ** Sieve my 
lady's oatmeal, grind my lady's flour" (Halliwell, No. 
cclxxxviii.). 

Country folk still resort to " Our Lady's Well," at Belper, 
in Derbyshire, bringing not only vessels from which to drink 
the water, but " noggins " in which to carry back a supply 
for home drinking. Afflicted persons have been seen bath- 
ing their limbs in the cold running water, and heard to say 
they were benefited by repeated applications. Belper child- 
ren used to carry — at any time when they thought fit, and 
could get permission from their mothers — a mug or por- 
ringer, and a paper containing oatmeal and sugar, to the 
Lady Well, and there drink the mixture of meal, sugar, and 
water. This was the chief item of the afternoon's outing.* 

" Sugar-cupping is another custom which survives here. On 
Easter Day young people and children go to the Dropping Well, 
near Tideswell [also in Derbyshire], with a cup in one pocket 
and a quarter of a pound of sugar [? honey] in the other, and 
having caught in their cups as much water as they wished from 
the droppings of the Tor-spring, they dissolved the sugar in it." " 

The Eas Well at Baschurch, in Shropshire, was frequented 
till a quarter of a century ago by young people, who went 
there on Palm Sunday to drink sugar and water and eat 
cakes. A clergyman who was present in 1830 speaks of 
seeing little boys scrambling for the lumps of sugar which 
escaped from the glasses and floated down the brook which 
flows from the spring into the river.^ 

' R. C. Hope, The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England, 1893, p. 53. 
^ Glover, History of Derbyshire, i., p. 307, quoted from Hope, loc. cit., p. 60. 
^ Miss C. S. Burne, Shropshire Folk-lore, p. 432. 



DRA IV A PAIL OF WA TER " 293 



iit 



[t is customary for the younger folk to assemble on Sun- 
day evenings and drink the water of St. Helen's Well (at 
Eshton, in Yorkshire) mixed with sugar. The ceremony 
appears now to have died out. It was in vogue late in the 
last century.* 

Great concourses of people from all parts used to assemble 
at " Our Lady's Wells," or the " Holy Wells," near Long 
Witton, in Northumberland, on Midsummer Sunday and 
the Sunday following, and amuse themselves with leaping, 
eating gingerbread (brought for sale to the spot), and drink- 
ing the waters of the well. These wells had a high reputa- 
tion for their very virtuous qualities; that farthest to the 
east is called the " Eye Well." ' 

, It is possible that drinking sugar-water is a degradation 
from drinking a mixture of oatmeal, sugar, and water, and this 
again may be an abbreviated form of making a cake. Sugar 
was not a primitive comestible, its place was taken by honey ; 
now honey mixed with meal, if flavoured, makes a kind of 
gingerbread, a confection that we find in the last example. 
( Gingerbread is certainly a popular cake with the folk, and it 
is probably a very ancient one. Honey cakes were a favour- 
ite food with the ancients. Aristophanes, for example, in 
his Birds, pokes fun at Herakles for being so fond of them. 

There are any number of wells in the British Islands at 
which offerings are made; the following will serve as ex- 
amples. At Sefton, in Lancashire, it was customary for 
passers-by to drop into St. Helen's Well a new pin " for 
good luck, " or to secure the favourable issue of an expressed 
wish.^ Pin-wells, as they are often popularly termed, are 
found in several places in Northumberland, Yorkshire, etc. 

' R. C. Hope, Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England, p. 204, 
^ Ibid., loc. cit., p. 108. 

^ Baines, Lancashire and Cheshire^ Past and Present, iii., 497 ; Notes and 
Queries, 5th series, x., p. 158. 



294 ^^-^ STUDY OF MAN 

^Henderson informs us that the country girls imagine that 
the well is in charge of a fairy or spirit who must be pro- 
pitiated by some offering, and the pin presents itself as 
the most ready or convenient, besides having a special suit- 
ableness as being made of metal/ 

In many places in the north of England pieces of rag, 
cloth, or ribbon take the place of the pins, and are tied to 
bushes adjoining the wells. 

The following custom pertained to the " Chapel Well," 
or " Rag Well," near Great Ay ton, in Yorkshire: 

" If a shirt or shift taken off a sick person be thrown into this 
well, it will show whether the person so sick will recover or not. 
If the article float, it denotes the recovery of the person to whom 
it belongs; but if it sink there is no hope for the life of the suf- 
ferer. To reward the patron saint of the well for his intelli- 
gence, a rag was torn off from the garment and left hanging 
upon the briars thereabout, ' where,' says the writer of a MS. in 
the Cottonian Library, ' I have seen such numbers as might 
have made a fayre rheme in a paper mylL' " " 

Mr. G. L. Gomme also records ^ that pin-wells are com- 
mon in Wales. Near the well of St. ^lian, not far from 
Bettws Abergeley in Denbighshire, resided a woman who 
officiated as a kind of priestess. Any one who wished to 
inflict a curse upon an enemy resorted to this priestess, and 
for a trifling sum she registered in a book kept for the pur- 
pose the name of the person on whom the curse was wished 
to fall. A pin was then dropped into the well in the name 
of the victim, and the curse was complete. 

^ Henderson, Folk-lore of the N'orthern Counties, p. 230. 

' Gentleman' s Magazine, 1823 ; and Gentleman s Magazine Library, Super- 
stitions, pp. 143, 147, Parkinson, in his Yorkshire Legends and Traditions , 
ii., 1889, p. 103, says that this did not happen at St. Oswald's Well, near the 
foot of Roseberry Topping, as the original writer states, but at the Rag Well. 

^ Ethnology in Folk-lore, pp. 86, 87. 



''DRAW A PAIL OF WATER" 295 

(^There are holy wells innumerable in Ireland, most of 
which are still resorted to by the peasantry, who firmly be- 
lieve in their efficacy. On the northern side of a stream that 
separates Counties Dublin and Wicklow is St. Kevin's Well, 
which was festooned with rags when I visited it. Many of 
these rags bore unmistakable evidence of having been re- 
moved from sores. I noticed one rag which was torn off 
from the spot where the garment was marked with its 
owner's name, so that in this case the spirit of the well could 
be in no doubt as to the identity of the patient. 
J In Aranmore, the largest of the Aran Islands, in Galway 
Bay, are numerous ** blessed places." St. Eany's Well, 
which is overhung by a bramble adorned with rags, is re- 
sorted to by women who d.esire to have children. It is 
beside a small level sward (a rare occurrence in the Aran 
Islands) known as the " Angel's Walk." " An' it 's here 
the Guardian Angels of Aran come, of a summer's night, to 
take their diversion." ' A mile or two away is the holy 
well attached to the Church of the Four Comely Saints. 
\ It is here the men come when they want children. To the 
sprays of blackberry and ivy which overshadow it are at- 
tached pieces of calico, velvet, whipcord, etc., and in the 
well itself are numerous buttons, fish-hooks, nails, and 
pieces of crockery, glass, etc. ... In the parish of 
Kilmurvy is that well, known as Tuber Carna, at which 
prayers for the recovery of a sick person are answered, and 
the water has the further properties of not being boilable 
and of restoring dead fish to life.' 

(The processions round the well sunwise are an important 
and nearly universal part of the ceremony in Ireland, and, 
as Gomme ^ points out, the apparently unimportant detail 

' Mar)' Banim, Here and There through Ireland, i8g2, p. 133. 
' A. C. Haddon and C. R. Browne, " The Ethnography of the Aran Islands, 
County Galway," Proc. Roy. Irish Acad, (3), ii., 1893, p. 818. 
^ Ethnology in Folk-lore, p. 93. 



296 THE STUDY OF MAN 

occurring in a Shropshire example/ of pouring water over 
a particular stone, receives significant light from the ex- 
amples in Ireland. Thus at Dungiven (in County Derry), 
after hanging their offerings of rags on the bush adjoining 
the well, the devotees proceed to a large stone in the River 
Roe, immediately below the old church, and, having per- 
formed an ablution, they walk round the stone, bowing to 
it and repeating prayers, and then, after performing a similar 
ceremony in the church, they finish the rite by a procession 
and prayer round the upright stone.'' 

Out of a large possible selection of Irish holy wells, I will 
conclude with one or two examples from the north. There 
is a lyn, or pool, in the stream just a little below Kilgort 
Bridge, near Claudy, County Derry, called " Turish Hole," 
or " Turish Lyn." Some people still believe that by bath- 
ing in this pool, cures can be obtained for any description of 
disease, and there are traditions that cripples have been 
cured at this place and left their crutches behind them there. 

Back-going" children when washed in this pool become 
healthy. In fact, tradition says that immersion in the 
pool was a cure for all manner of diseases, sick-headache in- 
cluded. The date of the ceremonies is May Eve (last day 
in April), when the persons wanting a cure bathe or wash 
themselves or the diseased part in the water and repeat some 
prayers. The offerings, which are of different kinds, are 
left in a bush beside the lyn. Often a piece of cloth is tied 
to the bush, sometimes a lock of hair, and sometimes three 

^ St. Oswald's Well, at Oswestry, is used for wishing and divination. One 
rite, says Miss Burne, is to go to the well at midnight, take some water up in 
the hand and drink part of it, at the same time forming a wish in the mind, 
throw the rest of the water upon a particular stone at the back of the well, and 
if the votary can succeed in throwing all the water left in his hand upon this 
stone without touching any other spot his wish will be fulfilled. — Ethnology in 
Folk-lore, p. 85. 

^ Mason, Statistical Account of Ireland, i., p. 328. 



'' DI^APV A PAIL OF WATER'' 297 

white stones picked up from the pool. It is not known 
when or by whom the lyn was blessed, but the custom of 
offering prayers there indicates that the people regard the 
place as holy. Tradition says that a very large trout was 
in Turish-o-Lyn, and that all who had the good fortune to 
see it on May Eve were sure to get cured. It is said that 
this trout was caught by some man, and when he had it on 
the coals cooking it for his dinner it leaped out of the door 
and went back to its lyn, but it never let itself be seen after- 
wards.' The tree over Cranfield Well, on the north shore 
of Lough Neagh, as in many other cases, is decorated with 
old rags, and crystals of carbonate of lime are found in the 
well, which are said to be very lucky.' 

Gomme ^ gives numerous examples of Scottish holy wells. 
He says: 

"About fifty years after the Reformation it was noted that the 
wells of Scotland ' were all tapestried about with old rags.' * 
Only one or two instances need be noted. At Toubermore Well, 
in Gigha Isle, devotees were accustomed to leave a piece of 
money, a needle, pin, or one of the prettiest variegated stones 
they could find.'' In Banffshire, at Montblairie, ' many still 
alive remember to have seen the impending boughs adorned with 
rags of linen and woollen garments, and the well enriched with 
farthings and bodies, the offerings of those who came from afar 
to the Fountain.' ^ At Wick they leave a piece of bread and 
cheese and a silver coin, which they alleged disappeared in some 
mysterious way.' . . . It is scarcely necessary to pursue 

' W. Gray, " Our Holy Wells : A Folk-lore Chapter," Froc. Belfast Nat. 
Field Club (2), iv., 1893-94, p. 94, 
"^ Loc. cit., p. 95. 
^ Eihitology in Folk-lore^ p. 95, 
■* The Book of Bon Accord, p. 268. 
* Martin's Tour, p. 230. 

^ Robertson, Antiquities of Aberdeen and Banff, ii., p. 310. 
■' Sinclair, N'ew Statistical Account of Scotland, xv. , p. 161. 



298 THE STUDY OF MAN 

these details with greater minuteness, and it may be stated as a 
general rule that ' at all these fountains the invalid used the same 
ceremonies, approaching them sunwise,' ^ or ' deisil, ' as it was 
called." 

Particularly prominent in Scotland, as well as in Ireland, 
was this obligation to approach the well sunwise — that is, 
in the same direction as that taken by the hands of a clock. 

The votaries often bathed in holy wells or sacred pools, 
and this could in some cases only be done after sunset and 
before the next sunrise; but, on the other hand, at certain 
wells it was an infallible cure for almost any disease to bathe 
as the sun rose on the first Sunday in May. These bathing 
customs are not indicated in any of the recorded versions 
of games. The water that was drawn in the bucket may 
have been for drinking, or for washing an affected part, but 
actual bathing is not implied. 

The injunction of silence must now be referred to. 

'^ At Penpont, in Dumfriesshire, the emissary of the patient 
has to go through a most careful ceremonial. When he reached 
the well he * had to draw water in a vessel, which was on no ac- 
count to touch the ground, to turn himself round with the sun, 
to throw his offering to the spirit over his left shoulder, and to 
carry the water, without ever looking back, to the sick person. 
All this was to be done in absolute silence, and he was to salute 
no one by the way. ' ^ The elements of magic ritual preserved 
here are very obvious, and it is to be remarked that silence is a 
condition imposed upon the devotees at many wells in Ireland, 
and also in England." ^ 

One more example must suffice. The Ffynnon Cefn 
Lleithfan, or Well of the Lleithfan Ridge, on the eastern 
slope of Mynydd y Rhiw, in the west of Caernarvonshire, is 

' Forbes Leslie, Early Races of Scotland, i., p. 156. 

^ Martin, Western Islajids, p. 7. ^ Gomme, Ethnology in Folk-lore, p. 99. 



'' DRAIV A PAIL OF WATER" 299 

a resort for the cure of warts. The sacred character of the 
well may be inferred from the silence in which it is necessary 
to go and come, and from the prohibition to turn or look 
back. The wart is to be bathed in the well with a rag or 
clout which has grease on it. The clout must then be care- 
fully concealed beneath the stone at the mouth of the well.' 

The association of a bush or tree with a holy well is so 
common as to be practically universal, and there is no need 
to dwell upon it. 

Mr. Gomme, in his very suggestive little book, Ethnology in 
Folk-lore, traces the distribution of holy wells in the British 
Islands. Speaking in general terms, the traces of well-wor- 
ship become more pronounced and more primitive in charac- 
ter as we pass from east to west in the British Islands. 

In the east of England no distinct ritual remains, and 
only a tradition of the healing qualities of a particular well 
or spring, or even its bare name, remain ; many are now 
quite nameless. 

In the west and north of England it is very different, and 
here we find examples of garland-dressing and pin-offerings. 
In Cornwall and Wales, and towards the northern border, 
the sacred bush by the well is decked with rags. These 
rag-bushes were formerly abundant in Scotland, and they 
still occur in great profusion in Ireland. 

To speak in terms of races : this well-cult is least observed 
in Teutonic England, but it is retained in Celtic England 
and in Celtic Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. It is less 
modified among the Goidelic Celts of Scotland and Ireland 
than among the Brythonic Celts of Wales and South-west 
England ; the latter are regarded by Professor Rhys as be- 
longing to a later wave of Celtic migration than the Irish 
and Scots. 

' E. Sydney Hartland, The Legend of Pei-seus, ii., 1895, p. 176 (quoting 
from Prof. Rhys). 



300 THE STUDY OF MAN 

It is, however, very probable that well-worship is older 
than the Celtic migration. The associated custom of the 
offerings of rags or parts of clothing upon bushes sacred to 
the well has been investigated with regard to its geographi- 
cal distribution by Mr. Walhouse,^ and it is certain that it 
occupies a much wider area than that inhabited by Aryan 
peoples. Thus, to quote a summary given by General 
Pitt-Rivers:' 

'(Burton says it extends throughout Northern Africa from west 
to east. . . . Burton found the same custom in Arabia 
during his pilgrimage to Mecca; in Persia Sir William Ouseley 
saw a tree close to a large monolith covered with these rags, and 
he describes it as a practice appertaining to a religion long since 
proscribed in that country; in the Deccan and Ceylon, Colonel 
Leslie says that the trees in the neighbourhood of wells may be 
seen covered with similar scraps of cotton; Dr. A. Campbell 
speaks of it as being practised by the Limboos near Darjeeling, 
in the Himalaya, where it is associated, as in Ireland, with large 
heaps of stones; and Hue in his travels mentions it among the 
Tartars." 

'[ Here," as Gomme points out, " not only do we get evidence 
of the cult in an Aryan country like Persia being proscribed, but, 
as General Pitt-Rivers observes, ' It is impossible to believe that 
so singular a custom as this, invariably associated with cairns, 
megalithic monuments, holy wells, or some such early pagan 
institutions, could have arisen independently in all these coun- 
tries.' That the area over which it is found is conterminous 
with the area of the megalithic monuments, that these monu- 
ments take us back to pre-Aryan people and suggest the spread 
of this people over the area covered by their remains, are argu- 

' M. J. Walhouse, " Rag-bushes and Kindred Observances," yourn, Anth, 
Inst., ix , 1879, pp. 97-106. 

"Colonel A. Lane Fox, "The Distribution of Megalithic Structures," 
Journ. Ethnol. Soc. (N. S.), i., 1869, p. 64, 



"BJ^Air A PAIL OF WATER'' 3OI 

ments in favour of a megalithic date for well-worship and rag 
offerings.'* ^ 

The persistence of this cult in the more Celtic portions of 
the British Islands is then probably not due to this being a 
religious practice of the Aryans, — who were more addicted 
to fire-worship, — but to the fact that in this part of the Em- 
pire we have distinct traces of that pre-Aryan race to which 
I have so often referred in the earlier portion of this book. 
The Celtic Aryans who invaded the British Islands could 
not uproot the old religion ; indeed, the converse has usually 
been the case. It is known that in various parts of the 
world the conquerors of a country have been psychically 
conquered by the people they have beaten — thus does the 
spirit revenge itself on matter. I have an example of this 
in my mind from New Guinea, where the immigrant Motu 
pay tribute to the sorcerers of the Koitapu, whose territory 
they have invaded, in order that they may obtain propitious 
Avinds.^ For, after all, only the people of a country can be 
expected to know the local spirits; and new-comers, whether 
as traders or conquerors, are utterly ignorant of the correct 
way to entreat or appease the local divinities. We may re- 
gard it as pretty certain that the Celt (to use this somewhat 
vague term) absorbed many of the features of the religion 
of his Neolithic neighbours. In Ireland and Scotland the 

' Loc. cit.. p. 106. 

^ "The Koitapu are much feared by the Motu because of their supposed 
wonderful power over sun, rain, heaven, and earth, north-west and south-east 
monsoons ; specially do the winds belong to them. . . . They are no doubt 
the real owners of the soil. . . . By no conquest do the Motuans live here, 
but simply because the Koitapuans allow them, saying, ' Yours is the sea, the 
canoes, and the nets ; ours is the land and the wallaby. Give us fish for our 
flesh, and pottery for our yams and bananas.' " (J. Chalmers, Pioneering in 
New Guinea, 1887, p. 13 ; cf. also A. C. Haddon, " The Decorative Art of 
British New Guinea : a Study in Papuan Ethnography," Cunningha77i Memoir 
X., Roy. Irish Acad., 1894, pp. 156-164, 258-269.) 



302 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Goidels have long been in possession of the soil, but, as has 
previously been suggested, the Saxon invasion appears to 
have pushed the Brythons more and more to the west. 
We, however, find unmistakable relics of water-worship all 
over the British Isles, even in the east of England, which 
has, so to speak, been glaciated by the cold common sense 
of the Teutonic invasion. 

./Apart from religious disposition or psychological idiosyn- 
crasy, there are other reasons why well-worship should per^ 
sist in the " Celtic " parts of the British Islands. The early 
" missionaries were obliged," as Mr. Gray points out, " as 
a matter of policy to adopt a compromise, retaining such 
popular rites and customs as were considered innocent 
amusements, and engrafting upon them the introduced 
formalities of the Christian ritual." * The teachers of the 
new doctrine were not of a very different stage of culture 
from those they sought to convert ; they had not those 
material benefits and luxuries of a high civilisation which 
gave to the missionaries of last century such a tremendous 
advantage over the savages they evangelised. In the one 
case, Christianity had to be engrafted craftily and circum- 
spectly on to paganism, as its visible benefits were not suffi- 
ciently apparent to appeal to the more materially minded 
mass of the people. In the other case, there was no point 
of contact between the two conditions, and, as a rule, 
savages do not realise a distinction between secular and 
sacred, between social duties and religious functions: so 
when these primitive folk came into contact with the mis- 
sionaries they were ready to embrace the religious tenets 
and the higher culture of the white man — and the Protest- 
ant evangelists insisted only too well that the past should 
be completely erased. Thus the old culture (for they had 
culture), the old morality (for they had morality, though it 

' Proc. Belfast Nat. Field Club (2), iv., p. 92. 



" DRA W A PAIL OF WA TER " 303 

may not have been the morality of the white man), and the 
old religion were slipped off like old garments, and life had 
virtually to begin afresh, clothed in the new garb of an alien 
civilisation and inspired by an exotic religion. 

How different was the policy enforced by Pope Gregory, 
as em.bodied in a letter written about the year 601 A.D., 
and addressed ** To his most beloved son, the Abbot Melli- 
tus," who was sent by the Pope to Augustine, first Bishop 
of Canterbury. Under the policy thus recommended the 
feasting and amusements that followed the old pagan rites 
were tolerated, ''to the end that whilst some gratifications 
are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily 
consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God." ' 

V Unfortunately the ' gratifications ' thus * permitted ' the 
early converts became afterwards the chief attraction on the 
day of dedication, and the religious observances on the patron's 
day degenerated into the ' pattern ' or ' fair ' that subsequently 
became the fruitful source of riot and disorder down to our 
own day. This pattern or fair originated with the trade carried 
on in former times by those who provided refreshments for the 
people who assembled at the wells or places dedicated to some 
saint who became the patron of the place, and this annual 
gathering on the patron's day was called a ' pattern ' [in Ire- 
land]. The original intention was for worship and religious 
festivities, but the festive soon absorbed the religious element, 
and all forms of abuses followed, and hence the gatherings 
were condemned by the Church. The early Christians strongly 
condemned the old pagan rites and ceremonies connected with 
wells, rivers, and fountains, mainly because of the riotous ex- 
cesses in which the votaries indulged. Making offerings to 
wells, trees, and earthfast rocks is denounced in a Saxon homily 
preserved at Cambridge University Library." ' 

' ^t^t's Ecclesiastical History, book i., chap. xxx. 
'^ W. Gray, loc. cit., p. 92. 



304 THE STUDY OF MAN 

As Mr. Gray points out, in the early annals of Ireland 
there are many references to wells, and their use in the 
baptism of early converts. In Dr. Reeves's Vita St. Coliun- 
bcB Auctore AdaimzanowQ find that St. Columba strove against 
the Magii (Druids) at a well in the country of the Picts. 
He exorcised the heathen demon of the well, which there- 
after, as a holy fountain, cured many diseases.^ In the Life 
of St. Columbkille , preserved in the LeabJiar Breac in the 
library of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin, it is said : 

" He blessed three hundred miraculous crosses: 

He blessed three hundred wells that were constant." 

We have, therefore, abundant evidence that well- or 
fountain-worship was extremely rife in the British Islands 
before Christianity was introduced, and that the early mis-, 
sionaries were instructed not to root up the old religion 
before replacing it with the new. We know that these good 
men took up their abode by the side of a sacred well, ap- 
preciating the fact that as the sacred waters would be con- 
tinually visited, so they would always have devotees to 
instruct. Thus it came about that the wells mostly retained 
their old virtue, but the sanctity was annexed by the mis- 
sionaries, and in later times the waters almost invariably 
bore their names. One point is clear, — the holiness and 
efficacy of the wells were in the vast majority, if not in all 
cases, pre-Christian and probably also pre-Celtic. 

The question next arises, Why were springs or streams 
considered holy ? 

\ Savages are not fools ; their ways may not be as our ways, 
of their thoughts as our thoughts, but there is something at 
the back of their beliefs and customs, if we could only get 
at it. The persistent forms of water - cult in the British 

' The Life of St. Cohimba, Founder- of Hy ; written by Adamnan. Ed. by 
W. Reeves, Dublin, 1857, p. iig. 



'' DRAW A FAIL OF WATER'' 305 

Islands open up many and interesting problems which can- 
not now be considered. 

By far the majority of the customs are related with the 
reputed healing powers of the well or spring, but there are 
traces of other virtues, such as a connection between well- 
worship and the worship of a rain-god, as Mr. Gomme has 
suggested.' 

"^There is common sense in the association of curative 
powers with water. It is well known that the wounds of 
primitive peoples heal with amazing rapidity ; wounds that 
would be of a most serious character amongst ourselves 
heal almost of themselves when the body is in rude health 
and when the air and clothes are practically free from putre- 
factive microbes. All that is necessary is to wash impurities 
out of the wounds. It is most probable that the uncultured 
mind would attribute the healing of the wound to the water, 
and not to the removal of dirt. 

vMany of these sacred springs have distinct medicinal 
qualities ; their water is impregnated with salts of various 
kinds ; there are sulphur and iron waters, chalybeate springs, 
and so forth. Experience has shown that these have defin- 
ite curative properties, and there is no doubt that these 
were early recognised. 

r A perennial supply of pure water has ever been appre- 
ciated by man, and it would always be remarked if a spring 
continued to flow when others ran dry. 

It would naturally be argued, there must be some reason 
for it, and, as always happens, some explanation would be 
forthcoming. Such a spring was pointed out to me in the 
island of Mabuiag, in Torres Straits, and it arose in this way: 
One day, Kwoiam, the legendary hero of the island, was 
^ thirsty, and he thrust his javelin into the rock, and water 
has gushed forth ever since. Before running away as a 

* Ethnology in Folk-lore, p. 94. 



306 THE STUDY OF MAN 

stream the water fills two small rock pools. Any one may 
drink from the lower basin, but only old men or ** big " 
men may drink from the upper, the penalty being premature 
greyness. I asked whether I might be permitted to drink 
from the upper pool, and I was told that I might, but evi- 
dently I was not worthy of the honour, as I have paid the 
penalty ! 

There is no need to say more. The advantages of a 
perennial spring, the undoubted healing properties of many 
wells, and the cleansing functions of all, are benefits to be 
devoutly thankful for. An expectant attitude of mind, the 

suggestion " of modern psychology, and those obscure 
mental conditions which all recognise who have impartially 
considered the " miracles " worked at shrines even in our 
own day — these have always been operative in addition to 
the more material benefits of the water, and so has inevit- 
ably grown up a recognition of virtue in the water. 

Primitive folk do not draw a sharp distinction between 
things animate and inanimate ; this is an essential fact to 
remember when we consider their religious beliefs and prac- 
tices. The bubbling spring, the running brook, the waving 
boughs, the rushing wind, the burning sun, the sparkling 
stars, are all as much alive as far as they can tell as are men 
or animals. Man, too, feels himself weak before the forces 
of nature; he by no means has subjugated nature; he does 
not yet possess the earth. As his forceful fellow-men have 
to be appeased, so must the activities outside man be ap- 
peased or interested in his favour. The appreciation of the 
vast unknown all around him gives origin to the feeling that 
it is essential for his welfare that he should be put into 
friendly or harmonious relation with those powers which 
can benefit him and may do him harm, and so Religion is 
born into the world. 
I Morality may be regarded as the acknowledgment of the 



'' DRAW A FAIL OF WATER" 307 

claims others have on our conduct. According to this view- 
it is the quintessence of etiquette, the habit which any- 
particular society has found to work well in practical experi- 
ence. In other words, it is the working basis of society. 

Religion, on the other hand, has originally nothing to do 
with morality, — of this there is abundant proof, — but it has 
for its aim the putting of man into harmonious relations 
with the forces outside him. It is how this can be accom- 
plished, and the various conceptions that have arisen con- 
cerning these outside forces, that constitute the science of 
Comparative Religion. 

We are now beginning to realise that this is the true " in- 
wardness " of many so-called ** savage " conceptions and 
rituals. At first there is a vague feeling-after if haply some- 
thing may be found, and it is from this nebulous state that 
systems have been evolved. 

The application of this principle to the subject of sacred 
wells and the offerings made at them has been so ably 
stated by my friend Mr. Hartland in the chapter *' On 
Sacred Wells and Trees " in his great work on The Legend 
of Perseus,^ that I do not hesitate to transcribe his general 
conclusions: 

*\To sum up: — We find widely spread in Europe the practice 
of throwing pins into sacred wells, or sticking pins or nails into 
sacred images or trees, or into the wall of a temple, or floor of a 
church, and — sometimes accompanying this, more usually alone — 
a practice of tying rags or leaving portions of clothing upon a 
sacred tree or bush, or a tree or bush overhanging, or adjacent 
to, a sacred well, or of depositing them in or about the well. 

" The object of this rite is generally the attainment of some 
wish, or the granting of some prayer, as for a husband or for 
recovery from sickness. 

^ Vol. ii., pp. 175-231. 



308 THE STUDY OF MAN 

** In Asia we have the corresponding customs of writing the 
name on the walls of a temple, suspending some apparently 
trivial article upon the boughs of a sacred tree, flinging pellets of 
chewed paper or stones at sacred images, and attaching rags, 
writings, and other things to the temples, and to trees. Trees 
are adorned in the same way, with rags and other useless things, 
in Africa — a practice not unknown, though rare, in America. 
On the Congo a nail is driven into an idol in the Breton manner. 
It cannot be doubted that the purpose and origin of all these 
customs are identical, and that an explanation of one will explain 
all. 

" The most usual explanations are: First, that the articles left 
are offerings to the god or presiding spirit; and, secondly, that 
they contain the disease of which one desires to be rid, and trans- 
fer it to any one who touches and removes them. Professor Rhys 
suggests that a distinction is to be drawn between the pins and 
the rags. The pins, he thinks, may be offerings; and it is note- 
worthy that in some cases they are replaced by buttons or small 
coins. The rags, on the other hand, may be, in his view, the 
vehicles of the disease. If this opinion were correct, one would 
expect to find both ceremonies performed by the same patient at 
the same well: he would throw in the pin, and also place the 
rag on the bush, or wherever its proper place might be. The 
performance of do^/i ceremonies is, however, I think, exceptional. 
Where the pin or button is dropped into the well, the patient 
does not trouble about the rag, and vice versa. 

" Nor can we stop here. From all we know of the process of 
ceremonial decay, we may be tolerably sure that the rags repre- 
sent entire articles of clothing, which at an earlier period were 
deposited. There is no need to discuss here the principle of 
substitution and representation, so familiar to all students of folk- 
lore. It is sufficient to point out that, since the rite is almost 
everywhere in a state of decay, the presumption is in favour of 
entire garments having been originally deposited; and that, in 
fact, we do find this original form of the rite in ancient and 
several modern examples. Such was a chalybeate spring in the 



" DRA W A PAIL OF WA TER " 3O9 

parish of Kennethmont, Aberdeenshire. As its virtue was in- 
voked not only for human beings, but for cattle, the tribute con- 
sisted of ' part of the clothes of the sick and diseased, and harness 
of the cattle. ' 

" M. Monseur ^ suggests that in those instances in which pins 
or nails were stuck into the cross, or tree, or figure of the saint, 
the aim was, by causing pain or inconvenience to the object of 
worship, to keep in his memory the worshipper's prayer. M. 
Gaidoz ^ has another theory. He says: ' The idol is a god, who 
always appears somewhat stupid; it moves not, it speaks not, and, 
peradventure, it does not hear very well. It must be made to 
understand by a sign, and a sign which will be at the same time 
a memento. In touching the idol, especially in touching the 
member corresponding to that which suffers, its attention is 
directed to the prayer. And more than that is done in leaving 
a nail or a pin in its body, for this is a material memento for the 
idol.' In putting it in this way, the learned professor does not 
desire to exclude the ideas of an offering and a transfer of dis- 
ease, for he expressly adds that both these ideas are mingled with 
that of a memento." 

Mr. Hartland continues: " I believe that a profounder thought 
forms the common ground in which all the customs under con- 
sideration — or, as I should prefer to say, all the variations of a 
single custom — are rooted. They are simply another application 
of the reasoning that underlies the practices of witchcraft and 
folk-medicine discussed in previous chapters [of TAe Legend of 
Perseus]. If an article of my clothing in a witch's hands may 
cause me to suffer, the same article in contact with a beneficent 
power may relieve my pain, restore me to health, or promote my 
general prosperity, A pin that has pricked my wart, even if not 
covered with my blood, has, by its contact, by the wound it has 
inflicted, acquired a peculiar bond with the wart; the rag that 
has rubbed the wart has by that friction acquired a similar bond; 

^ Bulletin de Folk-lore, Organe de la Societe du Folk-lore Wallon, i., 1892, 
p. 250. 

' Mdusine, vi., 1893, 155. 



310 THE STUDY OF MAN 

SO that whatever is done to the pin or the rag, whatever influ- 
ences the pin or the rag may undergo, the same influences are by 
that very act brought to bear upon the wart. If, instead of using 
a rag, I rub my warts with raw meat and then bury the meat, the 
warts will decay and disappear with the decay and dissolution of 
the meat. In like manner my shirt or stocking, or a rag to repre- 
sent it, placed upon a sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred well — 
my name written upon the walls of a temple — a stone or pellet 
from my hand cast upon a sacred image or a sacred cairn — a rem- 
nant of my food cast into a sacred waterfall or bound upon a 
sacred tree, or a nail from my hand driven into the trunk of the 
tree — is thenceforth in continual contact with divinity; and the 
effluence of divinity, reaching and involving it, will reach and 
involve me. In this way I may become permanently united with 
the god. 

" This is an explanation which I think will cover every case. 
Of course, it cannot be denied that there are instances where, the 
real object of the rite having been forgotten, the practice has be- 
come to a slight extent deflected from its earlier form. But it is 
not difficult to trace the steps whereby the idea and practice of 
divination became substituted for that of union with the object 
of devotion. Still less can it be denied that, where the practice 
has not been deflected, the real intention has in most places been 
obscured. These phenomena are familiar to us everywhere, and 
will mislead no one who understands that the real meaning is not 
what the people who practise a rite say about it, but that which 
emerges from a comparison of analogous observances." ^ 

Mr. Hartland, doubtless in order not to complicate his 
argument, refers to the '' god " of the fountain, but he 
would be the first to recognise that this is by no means the 
earliest conception. So far as I understand the ideas of 
primitive folk I should imagine the sequence to be some- 
what as follows : 

^ J. Sidney Hartland, The Legend of Perseus : A Study of Tradition in 
Story ^ Custofu and Belief , 3 vols. D. Nutt, London, 1894-96. 



" DRA W A PAIL OF WA TER " 3 1 1 

The spring or the stream were entities in the same way as 
human beings, animals, or plants. When the conception 
arose of a dual (or multiple) nature in man, when, to put it 
concisely, man was recognised as a body and an indwelling 
spirit, then the same conception would probably be trans- 
ferred to the other entities, and hence would arise the belief 
in a spirit of a fountain or of a tree, which doubtless was as 
much its own innate spirit as is the spirit of man. As the 
spirit of man can, according to savage belief, take upon 
itself various outward and bodily forms, ^ so there is no reason 
why the equivalent spirit of a well may not do the same. 
It was a matter of common experience that some aqua- 
tic animal inhabited a particular piece of water — one or more 
fish, a frog, or whatever it may have been. The natural 
conclusion was that the divine life of the waters, as Robert- 
son Smith ^ says, resided in the sacred fish that inhabited 
them; of this he gives numerous examples analogous to the 
Irish and Scottish. Gomme ^ quotes from Sinclair " a most 
remarkable example of this, which occurs at a well near the 
church of Kirkmichael in Banffshire. The guardian of the 
well assumed the semblance of a fly, who was always 
present, and whose every movement was regarded by the 
votaries at the shrine with silent awe, and as he appeared 
cheerful or dejected the anxious votaries drew their pre- 
sages. This guardian of the well of St. Michael was be- 
lieved to be exempt from the laws of mortality. ** To the 
eye of the ignorant," says the local account, " he might 

^ There is no need to take up my reader's time with illustrations of this 
proposition, as they will be found garnered in such works as J. G. Frazer's 
Golden Bough, ii., " The External Soul in Folk-Tales," p. 2g6, and E. S. 
Hartland's The Legend of Perseus, ii., " The Life-token in Tale and Custom," 
p. I. 

" W. Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, 1889, p. 161. 

^ Ethnology in Folk-lore, p. 102, 

■* Statistical Account of Scotland, xii., p. 465. 



312 THE STUDY OF MAN 

sometimes appear dead, but it was only a transmigration 
into a similar form, which made little alteration to the real 
identity." 

Later beliefs anthropomorphised these spirits, and we have 
water-fairies, nymphs, and the like. Finally, some mission- 
ary or hermit became associated with the well, and its thera- 
peutic properties were attributed to the blessing of the water 
by the saint. 

We may trace, then, in this simple game, the attenuated 
survival of a religious rite, which was observed by our savage 
forefathers of the Polished-Stone period. In children's 
games, or as faithfully performed practices by the folk, 
this cult has survived the waves of migration and the floods 
of race-conflict ; even Christianity itself has scarcely pre- 
vailed against it. 



M 



CHAPTER XIV 

COURTING GAMES 

ARRIAGE and its preliminaries form such an epoch 
in life that it would be strange if we did not find 
them mimicked in the games of children. As a matter of 
fact, courtship and marriage do constitute a very important 
element in these hitherto unwritten dramas; and it is most 
interesting to find that customs belonging to various strata 
of culture are enshrined in song and game. In other words, 
our children still commemorate methods of courtship which 
presumably belonged to different races and which certainly 
were in vogue during diverse ages. 

One of the singing games most frequently played by child- 
ren is that known as " Nuts in May." This seems at first 
sight a nonsensical title to a not very exciting game, but we 
shall find that there is plenty of interest in the game, to 
adults as well as to children. 

/'Here we come gathering nuts in May, 
Nuts in May, nuts in May, 
Here we come gathering nuts in May, 
May, May, May." 

" Whom will you have for nuts in May, 
Nuts in May, nuts in May ? 
Whom will you have for nuts in May, 
May, May, May ? " 

313 



314 THE STUDY OF MAN 



for nuts in May, 



Nuts in May, nuts in May, 

for nuts in May, 

May, May, May." 

' ' Very well, very well, so you may, 
So you may, so you may. 
Very well, very well, so you may. 
May, may, may. 

" Whom will you have to take her away, 
Take her away, take her away ? 
Whom will you have to take her away, 
Way, way, way ? " 

" to take her away. 

Take her away, take her away, 

to take her away, 

Way, way, way." 

The children form in two lines of equal length, facing one 
another, with sufficient space between the lines to admit of 
their walking in line backwards and forwards, towards and 
away from each other, as each line sings the verses allotted 
to it. The first line sings the first, third, and sixth verses, 
and the opposite line the second, fourth, and fifth. At the 
end of the sixth verse a handkerchief or other mark is laid 
on the ground, and the two children (whose names have 
been mentioned, and who are as evenly matched as possible) 
take each other's right hand and endeavour to pull each 
other over the handkerchief to their own side. The child 
who is pulled over the handkerchief becomes the " captured 
nut," and joins the side of her capturers. Then the game 
begins again by the second line singing the first, third, and 
sixth verses, while advancing to gather or capture the 
** nuts," the first line responding with the other verses, and 



COURTING GAMES 315 

with the same finish as before. Then the first line begins 
the game, and so on until all the children are in this way 
matched one against the other. 

Almost the only variants in the song are in the last line 
of each verse, which may run — " On a cold and frosty 
morning " (which I have heard in Cambridgeshire), " On a 
fine summer's morning," " So early in the morning," etc. 

The game is always played in lines, and the principal in- 
cidents running through all the versions are the same, i.e., 
one player is selected by one line of players from her oppo- 
nents' party. The " selected " one is refused by her party, 
unless someone from the opposite side can effect her capture 
by a contest of strength. In all but two or three versions 
this contest takes place between the two ; in one or two all 
the players join in the trial of strength. Sometimes the 
side which is victorious has the right to begin the next 
game first. In one version, when one child is drawn over 
the boundary line by one from the opposite side, she has to 
be " crowned " immediately. This is done by the con- 
queror putting her hand on the captured one's head. If 
this is not done at once the latter can return to her own 
side. In some versions the player who is selected for 
"* Nuts " is always captured by the one sent to fetch her. 
When boys and girls play, the boys are always sent to 

fetch away " the girls. 

Mrs. Gomme, from whose monograph ' I have abstracted 
the foregoing account, points out that there is some analogy 
in the game to marriage by capture and to the marriage 
customs practised at May Day festivals. She attributes the 
term " Nuts in May " to the gathering by parties of young 
men of bunches of may at the May festivals and dances, 
to decorate not only the May-pole, or the May " kissing- 
bush," but the doors of houses. Nuts is a misapprehension 

' A. B. Gomme, Traditional Games, i., p. 431. 



3l6 THE STUDY OF MAN 

of knots. In Buckinghamshire the children speak of " knots 
of may," meaning each little bunch of hawthorn blossom. 
Mrs. Gomme has heard the " May girls " sing in London 
on May Day — 

" Knots of may we 've brought you, 
Before your door it stands; 
It is but a sprout, but it 's well budded out 
By the work of the Lord's hands." 

The gathering of bunches of may by parties of young 
men and maidens to make the May-bush round which May 
Day games were held, and dancing and courting, is men- 
tioned by Sir William Wilde. ^ 

Mrs. Gomme continues: 

" The association of May — whether the month, or the flower, 
or both — with the game is very strong, the refrain, ' Cold and 
frosty morning, ' ' All on a summer's morning,' ' Bright summer's 
morning,' ' So early in the morning,' also being characteristic of 
the early days of May and spring, and suggests that the whole 
day, from early hours, is given up to holiday," "^ 

For the evidence for marriage by capture in the game, 
there is no element of love or courtship, though there is the 
obtaining possession of a member of an opposing party. It 
differs from ordinary contest-games in the fact that one 
party does not wage war against another party for posses- 
sion of a particular piece of ground, but individual against 
individual for the possession of an individual. That the 
player sent to fetch the selected girl is expected to conquer 
seems to be implied — first, by a choice of a certain player 
being made to effect the capture; secondly, by the one sent 
to "fetch" being always successful; and, thirdly, the 
** crowning " in one version. 

' Irish Popular Superstitions, p. 52. ' Loc. cit., p. 432. 



COURTING GAMES 3 17 

Marriage by capture is still practised in Australia and a 
few other places. In many savage and barbaric countries 
the bride makes a show of resistance, resorting in some 
cases to physical force, though all the time willing to be 
married, and there is frequently a sham fight between the 
relatives of the bride and bridegroom, and there are actual 
survivals in English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish customs of 
marriage by capture. 

Marriage by capture is now in the main a thing of the 
past, but there are records and survivals which prove it at 
one time to have been very widely spread. 

" All the Carib tribes used to capture women from different 
peoples and tribes, so that the men and women nowhere spake 
the same tongue, and Von Martius states that in Brazil ' some 
tribes habitually steal their neighbours' daughters.' Among the 
tribes of Eastern Central Africa, described by Macdonald, mar- 
riage by capture occurs not as a symbol only." 

According to a common belief, the Australian method of 
obtaining wives is capture in its most brutal form. But 
contrary to Mr. Howitt, Mr. Curr informs us that only on 
rare occasions is a wife captured from another tribe and 
carried off. The possession of a stolen woman would lead 
to constant attacks, hence the tribes set themselves very 
generally against the practice. 

Westermarck,^ from whom I have so largely quoted, gives 
a list of a good many peoples in various parts of the world. 
In Europe it occurred in former days among the Lapps, 
P'inns, and Esthonians. The same practice prevailed among 
the peoples of the Aryan race. " The forcible abduction of 
a maiden from her home, while she cries out and weeps, 
after her kinsmen have been slain or wounded, and their 

^ E. Westermarck, The History of Hu?nan Marriage, 1891, p. 384, et seq. 



3l8 THE STUDY OF MAN 

houses broken open," was, according to the laws of Manu,* 
one of the eight legal forms of marriage. 

According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, marriage by- 
capture was at the time customary throughout ancient 
Greece. The ancient Teutons frequently captured women 
for wives. The Slavs, in early times, according to Nestor, 
practised marriage by capture ; and in the marriage cere- 
monies of the Russians and other Slavonian nations, remi- 
niscences of this custom still survive. Indeed, among the 
South Slavonians, capture de facto was in full force no 
longer ago than the beginning of the present century. 
Among the Welsh, on the morning of the wedding day, the 
bridegroom, accompanied by his friends on horseback, car- 
ried off the bride. 

It will probably be new to many people that there are 
traces of marriage by capture yet remaining in country dis- 
tricts in England. It was only in the spring of 1896 
that at a wedding in the University Church at Cambridge, 
none of the bride's people entered the church, and as the 
wedding party left the building they were met by the 
bride's friends, who banged inflated paper bags. The ab- 
sence of the bride's relations from the church is the remnant 
of a fiction of enmity which is also emphasised by the pop- 
ping of paper bags. These replaced the firing of guns of 
an older period, and these, again, replaced the weapons of 
war which in the dim past of prehistoric times were called 
into active requisition. 

We read in the Folk-lore Journal : ' 

" At Becking, in Essex, the parents of the bride keep studiously 
out of the way at the time of the marriage ceremony. I remem- 
ber the surprise, not to say horror, of an old gardener who was 

' The Laws of Manu, book iii., vv. 33, 26. 
^ Vol. ii., p. 246. 



COURTING GAMES 319 

asked why he did not attend his daughter's wedding. ' Such a 
thing was never heered of in this here parish,' said he." 

The next stage in wife-getting is the giving of compensa- 
tion to the father, or the group, for the loss of the woman's 
services. This is very widely distributed even at the present 
day. The earlier phase which we have just considered may, 
however, persist to a greater or less extent. I found this 
transition phase amongst my friends of the Torres Straits. 
In all of the islands a wife could be obtained by an exchange 
of girls; a lad would give his sister in exchange for a wife, 
or an uncle might oblige a nephew and give him a cousin to 
exchange. In all other cases a wife had to be paid for ac- 
cording to arrangement, but there was usually a recognised 
rate of exchange. In some islands there was also a fight, 
which I was assured was " half-play." In some islands 
also the young man lived part of the year with his wife's 
people. 

Westermarck has collected numerous analogous cases 
among the uncivilised races of America, Africa, and Asia, 
and the Indian Archipelago. The custom of obtaining a 
wife by services rendered to her father has been familiarised 
to us by Hebrew tradition. 

The most common compensation for a wife is property 
paid to her owner. Her price varies indefinitely, v^y 
friend Maino, the chief of Tud (Warrior Island), told me he 
paid for his wife a camphor-wood chest from Singapore, a 
dozen jerseys, some fathoms of calico, a dozen fish-hooks, 
a pound of tobacco, and he finished off the enumeration 
with the exclamation of '\By golly, she too dear! " 

There is no need to traverse the globe for examples; a 
few cases from nearer home will suffice. Westermarck says 
that in all branches of the Semitic race men had to buy or 
serve for their wives, the " Mohar " or " Mahr " being 



320 THE STUDY OF MAN 

originally the same as a purchase sum/ (\w the Books of 
Ruth "^ and Hosea/ the bridegroom actually says he has 
bought his bride; and modern Jews, according to Michaelis, 
have a sham purchase among their marriage ceremonies, 
which is called " Marrying by the penny." " 

Among the Finns marriage by purchase exists now, or did 
so till quite lately. Among the Aryan nations, too, mar- 
riage was based on the purchase of the wife. Westermarck 
gives numerous examples, amongst which we may note that 
the ancient Scandinavians believed that even the gods had 
bought their wives. In Germany the expression, " To pur- 
chase a wife," was in use till the end of the Middle Ages. 
As late as the middle of the sixteenth century the English 
preserved in their marriage ritual traces of this ancient legal 
procedure.^ 

This phase also is illustrated in the common singing game 
usually called " Knights " or " Lords from Spain." A 
version ^ from the village of Bocking, in Essex, runs as 
follows : — 

" ' I am a gentleman come from Spain. 
I 've come to court your daughter Jane.' 

" * My daughter Jane is yet too young 
To understand your flattering tongue.' 

** ' Let her be young or let her be old, 
She must be sold for Spanish gold. 

* W. Robertson Smith, Marriage and Kinship in Early Arabia, 1885, p. 78 
et seq. 

2 Ruth iv., 10. 
' Hosea iii., 2. 

* J. D. Michaelis, Commentaries on the Laws of Moses (Trans.), 1814, i., p. 

451- 

^ E. Friedberg, Das Recht der Eheschliessung in seiner geschichtliche Ent- 

wicklung, Leipzig, 1865, pp. 33, 38. 

^ Folk-lore Record, iii., p. 171. 



Plate VI. 



/ 




,,„**rjaii 


' ^^VBhhl^ ^^^I 


T 






^^H 



Fig. I. 




Fig. 2. 
" Lords from Spain " ; from photographs by Miss Clara M. Patterson. 



COURTING GAMES 32 1 

" * So fare thee well, my lady gay, 
I '11 call upon you another day.' 

** * Turn back, turn back, you saucy boy, 
And choose the fairest you can spy.' 

" * The fairest one that I can see 
Is pretty Miss . Come to me! ' " 

This game is also played by two alternately advancing 
and receding lines. At first one line consists of only a 
single lord, who sings the first, second, and third stanzas. 
After a pretended reluctance to come to terms, the girl is 
eventually sold to him. These then sing, ** We are two 
lords from out of Spain," according to the local version, 
and so it goes on till the lords have purchased the last girl. 

The following are the words of this game as played at 
Ballymiscaw, County Down ^ (Plate VI.): 

" ' There was one lord that came from Spain, 
He came to court my daughter Jane. 

** ' My daughter Jane she is too young 
To be controlled by a flattering tongue.' 

" 'Will you?' 
"'No.' 






Will you ? ' 
Yes.' " 



The one who answers " Yes" then joins hands with the 
one lord, "and they dance round, singing: 

You dirty wee scut you would n't come out 
To help us with our dancing. 

There were two lords that came from Spain," etc., etc. 

^ Clara M. Patterson, " A Few Children's Games," Proc. Belfast Nat. Field 
Club (2), iv. , 1893-94, p. 49. 



322 THE STUDY OF MAN 

One or two points call for notice in this version as they 
occur elsewhere, (i) the use of the word " controlled " for 

cajoled "; (2) the abbreviation of the dialogue, and, in 
this instance, the omission of the mercenary spirit, and 
finally the inelegant couplet at the finish. In a version 
from Auchencairn, Kirkcudbrightshire, collected by my elder 
daughter, the " lord " has become a " gypsy," and when 
the mother tells the gypsy to " choose the fairest one you 
see," the latter chooses a girl and asks her to come. She 
replies " No," and turns right round away from the wooer; 
as she is turning the gypsy says : 

" The naughty girl she would not come out, 

She would not come out, to help me in my dancing." 

The second time she is asked she must say " Yes." Then 
the successful wooer sings: 

" Now we have got the flower of May, 

The flower of May, to help us in our dancing." 

The two girls take hold of each other's hands and sing: 
" Here come two gypsies come from Spain," etc., etc. 

Though often dropped out, the buying element is an 
essential one ; I have an Irish variant which emphasises this 
incident. 

" Let her be young or let her be old, 
It 's for her beauty she must be sold." 

A French version, that was presented before the Liver- 
pool Teachers' Guild by Mrs. J. G. Frazer, marks a transi- 
tion to a higher stage of culture. 



COURTING GAMES 323 

LE CHEVALIER DU GUET. 

Tous. " * Qu'est-c'qui passe ici si tard, 

Compagnons de la Marjolaine ? 
Qu'est-c'qui passe ici si tard, 
Gai ! gai ! dessus le quai ? ' 

Le Chevalier. " ' C'est le chevalier du guet, 

Compagnons de la Marjolaine, 
C'est le chevalier du guet, 
Gai ! gai ! dessus le quai ! * 

Tous. " ' Que demand, le chevalier, 

Compagnons de la Marjolaine, 
Que demand, le chevalier, 
Gai ! gai ! dessus le quai ? ' 

Le Chevalier. " ' Une fille a marier, 
Compagnons,' &c. 

Tous. " ' N'y a pas de fille a marier, 

Compagnons,' &c. 

Le Chevalier. " ' On m'a dit qu' vous en aviez, 
Compagnons,' &c. 

Tous. " * Ceux qu' Ton dit s'sont trompes, 

Compagnons,' &c. 

Le Chevalier. " * Je veux que vous m'en donniez, 
Compagnons,' &c. 

Tous. *' ' Sur les minuits revenez, 

Compagnons,' &c. 

Le Chevalier. " ' Les minuits sont bien sonnes, 
Compagnons,' &c. 

Tous. " ' Mais nos filles sont conchies, 

Compagnons,' &c. 



324 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Le Chevalier. " ' En est-il un' d'eveillee, 
Compagnons/ &c. 

Tous. " ' Qu'est-ce que vous lui donnerez, 

Compagnons,' &c. 

Le Chevalier. " ' De Tor, des bijoux assez, 
Compagnons,' etc. 

Tous. " ' EUe n'est pas interessee 

Compagnons,' &c. 

Le Chevalier. '* ' Mon coeur je lui donnerait, 
Compagnons,' &c. 

Tous. " ' En ce cas — la, choisissez, 

Compagnons de la Marjolaine,' &c." 

We have sinailar games in our own country, in which the 
damsel will no longer permit herself to be sold, and only 
yields to her wooer when he offers her his heart. 

The union of husband and wife is indicated in various ways 
by many peoples. In some parts of India the contracting 
parties tie themselves or are tied together. Among that 
very primitive people, the Veddahs of Ceylon, who, accord- 
ing to the Sarasins, never tell a lie and never steal, the bride 
ties a thin cord of her own twisting round the bridegroom's 
waist, and they are then husband and wife. The man 
always wears this string, and nothing would induce him to 
part with it, for it is emblematic of the marriage tie, and, 

as he never parts with it, so he clings to his wife through 
life." ' . In many parts of India bride and bridegroom are for 
the same reason marked with one another's blood, and 
Colonel Dalton believes this to be the origin of the custom 
now so common of marking with red-lead. The former of 

^ J. Bailey, " An Account of the Wild Tribes of the Veddahs of Ceylon," 
Trans. Eihnol. Soc. (N.S.), ii., 1863, p. 293. 



COURTING GAMES 325 

these customs survives in our wedding-ring, but unfortu- 
nately we have not in the British Islands the pretty conti- 
nental custom of the exchange of rings, and the wearing of 
his ring by the husband. I do not recall a reminiscence of 
the blood custom in folk-practice or folk-song in our own 
country. 

Among the Australian Narrinyeri a woman is supposed 
to signify her consent to the marriage by carrying fire to 
her husband's hut and making his fire for him. 

In Croatia the bridegroom boxes the bride's ears, in order 
to indicate that henceforth he is her master. And in 
ancient Russia, as a part of the marriage ceremony, the 
father took a new whip, and, after striking his daughter 
gently with it, told her that he did so for the last time, and 
then presented the whip to the bridegroom. 

Marriage ceremonies arose by degrees and in various ways. 
When the mode of contracting a marriage altered, the earlier 
mode, from having been a reality, survived as a ceremony. 
Thus, as we have seen, the custom of capture was trans- 
formed into a mere symbol after purchase was introduced 
as the legal form of contracting a marriage. In other in- 
stances the custom of purchase has survived as a ceremony 
after it has ceased to be a reality. 

According as marriage was recognised as a matter of some 
importance, the entering into it came, like many other 
significant events in human life, to be celebrated with cert- 
ain ceremonies. Very commonly it is accompanied by a 
wedding feast. 

The marriage ceremony often indicates in some way the 
new relation into which the man and woman enter to each 
other, most frequently the living together, or the wife's 
subjection to her husband. Among the Navajos the cere- 
mony merely consisted in eating maize-pudding from the 
same platter; and among the Santals of India, says Colonel 



326 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Dalton, " the social meal that the boy and girl eat together 
is the most important part of the ceremony, as by the act 
the girl ceases to belong to her father's tribe, and becomes 
a member of her husband's family." ' Eating together is, 
in the Malay Archipelago, the chief and most wide-spread 
marriage ceremony. The same custom occurs among the 
Hovas of Madagascar, the Hindus, Esthonians, and in 
Ermland, in Prussia.^ 

In many parts of the British Islands children dance in a 
ring, and sing to a rhyme, in which the following very fre- 
quently occurs : 

*' He courted [Aggie Wilson] before he was a man ; 
He hugged her, he juggled her, he took her on his knee, 
Saying, * My dear [Aggie], won't you marry me ? ' 

" [Aggie] made pudding so nice and so sweet. 

And [Willie] got his knife and cut it round so neat. 
Saying, 'Taste, love, taste, love, don't say nay, 
For next Monday morning is our wedding day.' " V 

Another Irish version runs: 

*' [Annie] made a pudding, 

She made it very sweet ; 
She dare n't put a knife in it 

Till [George] came home at neet. 
'Taste, [George,] taste, and don't say nay ! 
Perhaps to-morrow morning '11 be our wedding day.* " 

Our bought wedding-cake is an unsentimental survival of 
this pretty custom. 

^ E. T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, Calcutta, 1872, p. 216. 
^ The foregoing remarks are abbreviated from Westermarck's History of 
Human Marriage, p. 148. 

' Proc. Belfast Nat, Field Club (2), iv., p. 82. 



COURTING GAMES 327 

In this particular group of singing games love-making 
forms an important element ; we have thus reached a higher 
level of culture than is exhibited in the previous games. 

In these courting games we often find love-lorn damsels, 
who, like poor Mary, sit weeping. 

*' Poor Mary sits a-weeping, a-weeping, a-weeping. 
What is Mary weeping for, weeping for, weeping for ? 
She 's weeping for a husband, a husband, a husband." 

Or there is the very practical young lady on the mount- 
ain : 

" There stands a lady on a mountain, 
Who she is I do not know ; 
All she wants is gold and silver. 
All she wants is a nice young man. 

" Now she 's married I wish her joy, 
First a girl and then a boy ; 
Seven years after son and daughter : 
Pray, young couple, kiss together. 

" Kiss her once, kiss her twice, 
Kiss her three times three." 

The marriage formula of the second verse is a very com- 
mon one, subject, of course, to numerous variations. That 
this enshrines some ancient and widely spread sentiment 
there can be little doubt. 

Finally, we find a large number of games which are merely 
excuses for kissing, such as " Kiss in the Ring," the 

Cushion Dance," and others, and incidentally kissing 
comes, not unnaturally, into a number of courting and mar- 
riage games. As it happens, England has an ancient reput- 
ation for kissing, as the celebrated scholar Erasmus testified 
to his friend, Faustus Anderlin, at Paris: 



328 THE STUDY OF MAN 

r 

'tVour friend Erasmus gets on well in England. ... If 

you are a wise man you will cross the Channel yourself. 

To mention but a single attraction, the English girls are divinely 

pretty. Soft, pleasant, gentle, and charming as the Muses. They 

have one custom which cannot be too much admired i^Est prceterea 

mos nunquam satis laudatus). When you go anywhere on a visit 

the girls all kiss you. They kiss you when you arrive. They 

kiss you when you go away ; and they kiss you again when you 

return. Go where you will, it is all kisses {basiatur affatim deni- 

que, quocunque te moveas). (^y dear Faustus, if you had once 

tasted how soft and fragrant these lips were, you would wish to 

spend your life here.!^ ^ 
i/ 
' " Ex Anglia, anno 1499," Epist., Ixv. (quoted from the Programme of Sir 
Ernest Clarke's lecture on " May Day in Merrie England," delivered to the 
Cambridge Antiquarian Society, March 8, 1897). 



CHAPTER XV 

FUNERAL GAMES 

IN the summer of 1896, I saw the following game played in 
the village of Barrington, near Cambridge. 
A row of girls stand opposite to the " mother," behind 
whom hides the crouching " Jenny " (Plate VIL, Fig. i). 
The row advance and retreat, singing the first couplet. 

V 
I 've come to see Jenny Jones, Jenny Jones, 

How does she do ? " 

The " mother" replies: 

" She is washing, washing, washing, 
You can't see her now." 

The row again advance and retreat (this they do all 
through the game) : 

" ' I 've come to see Jenny Jones, Jenny Jones, 
How does she do ? ' 

" * She is scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing, 
You can't see her now.' 

" ' I 've come to see Jenny Jones, Jenny Jones, 
How does she do ? ' 

"'She is ill.' 

329 



330 THE STUDY OF MAN 

" ' I 've come to see Jenny Jones, Jenny Jones, 
How does she do ? ' 

" * She 's very ill.' 

*' ' I 've come to see Jenny Jones, Jenny Jones, 
How does she do.? ' 

" ' She 's dead.' " 

The ** mother " says this in a mournful voice, and at the 
same time " Jenny " lies on the ground (Plate VII., Fig. 2). 
The row again advance as before : 

" * Come in blue, blue, blue, 
Will that suit ? ' " 

The ** mother " replies: 

" ' Blue is for sailors, sailors, sailors. 
That won't suit.' 

** * Come in red, red, red. 
Will that suit ? ' 

" * Red is for soldiers, soldiers, soldiers, 
That won't suit.' 

" * Come in white, white, white, 
Will that suit ? ' 

" * White is for weddings, weddings, weddings. 
That won't suit.' 

" ' Come in black, black, black, 
Will that suit ? ' 

" ' Black is for mourning, mourning, mourning, 
That will suit.' " 



Plate VII. 




Fig. I. 




Fig. 2. 
"Jenny Jones " ; from photographs. 



FUNERAL GAMES 33 1 

Two of the girls come forward, take up " Jenny," and 
convey her a short distance off (Plate VIII., Fig. i), the 
" mother " and other children following crying, with hand- 
kerchiefs up to their eyes. " Jenny " is then placed at full 
length on the ground as if in a grave ; all the children stand 
round crying; the girl who stands over the grave picks up 
a handful of earth and sprinkles it over the dead " Jenny " 
(Plate VIII., Fig. 2), saying: 

"/Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, 
)lf God won't have you the Devil must." 

"* Jenny Jones " then jumps up and runs after the other 
children, who flee before her. The one she catches is the 
Jenny Jones of the next game. 

At Auchencairn, in Kircudbrightshire, I collected the 
following version : — 

GEORGINA. 

J^irst side. " * I 've come to see Georgina, Georgina, Georgina, 
I 've come to see Georgina, how 's she to-day ? ' 

Second side. ' She 's up-stairs washing, washing, washing, 

She 's up-stairs washing and can't get away.' 

JFirst side. * Oh ! very well, ladies, ladies, ladies. 
We '11 come another day.' 

^irst side. " ' We 've come to see Georgina, Georgina, Georgina, 
We 've come to see Georgina, how 's she to-day ? ' 

Second side. * She 's up-stairs ironing, ironing, ironing, 

She 's up-stairs ironing and can't get away.' 

JFirst side. ' Oh ! very well, ladies, ladies, ladies, 
We '11 come another day.' 

First side. " * We 've come to see Georgina, Georgina, Georgina, 
We 've come to see Georgina, how 's she to-day ? ' 



332 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Second side, 'She was coming down-stairs with a basin of 

water 
And she fell down and broke her toe, and 
she 's dead.' 

First side, " * And what shall we dress her in, dress her in, dress 
her in ? 
And what shall we dress her in, dress her in — red ? * 
Second side, ' Red for the soldiers, soldiers, soldiers, 

Red for the soldiers, and that sha'n't do.' 

First side. " ' What shall we dress her in, dress her in, dress her in ? 

What shall we dress her in, dress her in — blue ? ' 
Second side. ' Blue for the sailors, sailors, sailors, 

Blue for the sailors, and that sha'n't do.' 

First side. *' * What shall we dress her in, dress her in, dress her in ? 

What shall we dress her in, dress her in — black ? ' 
Second side. ' Black for the mourners, mourners, mourners. 

Black for the mourners, and that sha'n't do.' 

First side. '' * What shall we dress her in, dress her in, dress her in ? 

What shall we dress her in, dress her in — white ? * 
Second side. * White for the dead people, dead people, dead 

people, 
White for the dead people, and that will do.* " 

My friend. Miss Patterson, collected the following version 
at Holywood, County Down.' Here " Jenny " sits upon 
her " mother's " knee, and is not hidden as in most of the 
versions. 

\ 

* I came to see Jeannie jo, Jeannie jo, Jeannie jo, 

I came to see Jeannie jo, is she within ? ' 

' Clara M. Patterson, " A Few Children's Games," Proc. Belfast Nat. Field 
Club (2), iv,, 1893-94, p. 50. 



Plate VIII. 




Fig. I. 



■^mpi' 




Fig. 2. 
Jenny Jones " ; from photographs. 



FUNERAL GAMES 333 

** ' Jeannie jo 's washing clothes, washing clothes, washing 
clothes, 
Jeannie jo 's washing clothes, and ye can 't see her 
to-day.' 

** * Oh, but I 'm sorry, I 'm sorry, 
Oh, but I 'm sorry I can't see her to-day.' 

" ' Farewell, ladies, O ladies, O ladies, 
Farewell, ladies, and gentlemen too.' " 

Then the same verses are repeated for " Starching 
clothes," " Smoothing clothes," and *' Dead," including 
the two final couplets. The verses then proceed with : 

" ' What shall we dress her in, dress her in, dress her in .? 
What shall we dress her in ? Shall it be black ? ' 

" ' Black for the sweeps, the sweeps, the sweeps, 
Black for the sweeps, and that shall not do.' 

*' ' What shall we dress her in, dress her in, dress her in ? 
What shall we dress her in ? Shall it be blue ? ' 

" ' Blue for the sailors, sailors, sailors. 
Blue for the sailors, and that shall not do.' 

** ' What shall we dress her in, dress her in, dress her in ? 
What shall we dress her in ? Shall it be red ? ' 

Red for the soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. 
Red for the soldiers, and that shall not do. ' 

What shall we dress her in, dress her in, dress her in ? 
What shall we dress her in ? Shall it be orange ? ' 

Orange for the Orange-men, Orange-men, Orange-men, 
Orange for the Orange-men, and that shall not do.' 

What shall we dress her in, dress her in, dress her in ? 
What shall we dress her in ? Shall it be white ? ' 



334 '^HE STUDY OF MAN 

" ' White for the corpse, the corpse, the corpse, 
White for the corpse, and that will just do.' " 

They then make a funeral procession, the two biggest 
making a seat with their hands for " Jenny " and carrying 
her, followed by the rest in pairs, singing: 

" We have lost a soldier, soldier, soldier, 
We have lost a soldier, and the Queen has lost a man. 
We will bury him in the bed of glory, glory, glory. 
We will bury him in the bed of glory, and we '11 never 
see him any more." 

These three examples from England, Scotland, and Ire- 
land must suffice ; it would have been easy to print a large 
number of versions. There are two chief ways in which the 
game is played, but most of them follow the procedure nar- 
rated above, usually with minor variations. The ** mother " 
usually holds out her skirts with both hands so as to hide 
** Jenny " more completely. When " Jenny " is dead she 
is sometimes covered up. The resuscitation of ** Jenny " is 
widely spread. At Liphook, in Hampshire, she is ** swung 
to life again " by two of the players. In the Southampton 
version she is called " The Ghost " ; the children run away 
in affected terror, calling out, " The Ghost! " 

The second form of playing the game occurs in Shropshire. 
The players are divided into two sides of about equal num- 
bers, each side advancing and retiring in line when singing 
their parts. " Jenny " in some cases walks with the girls 
in her line until the funeral, when she is carried to the grave, 
and in others she stands alone behind the line. 

The differences in the words of the various versions are 
comparatively slight. The domestic occupations of wash- 
ing, drying, folding, starching, and ironing occur more or 
less in all the variants, except in the most degraded forms; 



FUNERAL GAMES 335 

brewing and baking are recorded only in one case. The 
sequence of " ill," " v^ry ill," " dying," and " dead " may 
also be abbreviated. 

The choosing of colours is an important element alike 
for the living and the dead. In some versions the mourners 
ask what colour they are to wear when they attend the 
funeral ; red, blue, white, and black are nearly always men- 
tioned, but interesting additions may be made. One ver- 
sion asks " Pink ? " with the reply: 

" Pink is for the babies, babies, babies, 
Pink is for the babies, and that won't do." 

In Irish versions we have local colour added. In the 
North, in reply to the question, " Shall it be orange ? " the 
mourners are told : 

" Orange for the Orange-men," &c. 

One version adds: 

" Shall we come in green ? " 

" Green is for the good people, good people, good people. 
Green is for the good people. You can't come in that." 



re 



Calling the fairies " good people," or " wee-folk," or 
similar names, is a common practice in Ireland, since these 
little people individually or collectively do not like to be 
called by their own name. Of this there are many instances 
in fairy-lore, but this is by no means confined to fairy-folk. 
On my first landing on Inishmaan, the central of the three 
Aran Islands in Galway Bay, I saw a group of two men and 
two women sitting on the beach. They allowed me to take 
their photographs,' but when I asked the women to tell me 
their names so that I might post prints to them, they re- 

' Proc. Roy. Irish Acad. (3), ii., pi. xxiii,, fig. 7. 



336 THE STUDY OF MAN 

fused. The women never received their photographs, for to 
this day I do not know who they were. About an hour 
afterwards I was measuring some of the men of the island, 
and I asked a young man who was standing by to let me 
measure him, and I asked him his name. He would not 
tell it, but a bystander told it to me. 

This circumstance reminded me that four years before I 
had asked a precisely similar question of a Papuan in one of 
the islands of Torres Straits, who had exhibited the same 
disinclination to tell his name; further illustrations of this 
superstition could be multiplied indefinitely. 

It is interesting to note that the folk credit the same re- 
pugnance to being called by their own names to other living 
things ; for example, a fisherman told me that in Aberdeen 
the salmon is called " the red fish," and in Sunderland the 
pig is known by fisherfolk as " the queer fellow," it bring- 
ing bad luck for them to be called by their proper designa- 
tions, since in the case of the salmon the fish would not 
allow themselves to be caught. 

The meaning of it is simple. It is a very wide-spread be- 
lief among primitive peoples — indeed it is universal — that 
one can gain power over a person by possessing some of his 
hair, nail-parings, spittle, or whatever it may be. The same 
property extends to his belongings, and especially to a 
knowledge of his name ; how unlikely would such a person 
be to voluntarily give his name to a stranger. 
A To come back to " Jenny jo," the final answer to the 
mourners is that they must come in black, but when the 
question is asked as to what the dead maiden must be 
dressed in, the reply is invariably white, in consonance with 
the custom of very ancient days. The dressing of the dead 
body of a maiden in white by her girl companions, and the 
carrying of the body by them to the grave, are common vil- 
lage customs, the whole village being invited to the funeral. 



FUNERAL GAMES 337 

As Newell says : ^ 

d " Such imitations of burial ceremonies are not merely imagina- 
tive. It was once the custom for the girls of a village to take an 
active part in the interment of one of their number. In a Flem- 
ish town, a generation since, when a young girl died, her body 
was carried to the church, thence to the cemetery by her former 
companions. The religious ceremony over, and the coffin de- 
posited in the earth, all the young girls, holding in one hand the 
mortuary cloth, returned to the church, chanting the Maiden's 
Dance with a spirit and rhythm scarcely conceivable by one who 
has not heard it. The pall which they carried to the church was 
of sky-blue silk, having in the middle a great cross of white silk, 
on which were set three crowns of silver." 

The following is a rendering of the Maiden s Dance : 

" In heaven is a dance ; 
Alleluia ! 
There dance all the maids ; 
Benedicamus Domino — 
Alleluia ! 

" It is for Amelia ; 
Alleluia ! 
We dance like the maids ; 
Benedicamus Domino — 
Alleluia ! " ' 

The common English name of the game is " Jenny 
Jones," but it is sometimes called " Jenny jo," as it is also 
in Scotland and North-east Ireland ; the latter may safely be 
regarded as the original form. Mrs. Gommesays: " The 
corruption of this into ' Jenny Jones ' is exactly what might 
be expected from modern English ignorance of the pretty 

^ Games and Songs of American Children, 1S84, p. 65. 
' Bernoni, Cant. Pop. Venez., xi., 2, " Rosetina." 



338 THE STUDY OF MAN 

meaning of the word /(?, * dear,' and to what length this 

corruption may proceed under such influences may be seen 

by such forms as * Jingy Jog,' * JiHy Jog/ and ' Georg- 

> > > 
ma. 

Mrs. Gomme is inclined to believe that the game that is 
played by two lines of children is the older version, and 
suggests that this represents " the wooing by a band of 
suitors of girls surrounded by their fellow-villagers" — a 
custom which became obsolete in favour of ordinary mar- 
riage custom. The dropping out of this custom would 
cause the game to change from a representation of both 
wooing and burial to one of burial only. As burial only, 
the mother and one line of children is action sufficient, but 
the presence of a wooing incident in the earlier form of the 
game is plainly revealed by the verse which sings, " Fare 
ye well, ladies," or, as it has become in the English variant. 

Very well, ladies." 

The English versions are usually suggestive of a troop of 
village maidens who call on a companion, but they are re- 
fused admit^ance, as the daily tasks have to be performed. 
On the death of their little friend they return to discuss the 
important question of how they and the corpse are to be 
dressed, and finally they perform their allotted duty as pall- 
bearers and mourners. 

In some of the Scottish versions the opening incident is 
that of a lover coming to court his sweetheart. He is re- 
peatedly prevented from seeing her, owing to the fact that 
her mother keeps her close to her every-day domestic 
duties; later the constant swain is denied for a more serious 
reason, and finally, instead of his blushing love, he finds a 
cold corpse. This popular game is in reality a pathetic 
drama. 

There are other funeral games among our children, as, for 
example, the widely spread " Green Gravel." 



FUNERAL GAMES 339 

Round Cambridge the village children join hands, form a 
ring, and walk round, singing: 

" Green gravel, green gravel, your grass is so green, 
The fairest young damsel that ever was seen. 

Your true love is dead, 

He sends you a letter to turn round your head." 

On mentioning one of the players by her Christian and 
surname, the girl turns right round, so that she now faces 
outwards. On the repetition of the verse the girl next to 
her is mentioned, and so on, in regular order, until all the 
girls face outwards, when the game is finished. 

An Irish version runs : ^ 

" Green gravel, green gravel, the grass is so green, 
The prettiest damsel that ever was seen ; 
I washed her with new milk and dressed her in silk. 
And I wrote down her name with a brass pen and ink. 

Dear , dear , your true love is dead. 

And I send you a letter to turn round your head." 

A Belfast version has for the middle lines: ' 

"We washed her, we dried her, we rolled her in silk, 
And we wrote down her name with a glass pen and ink." 

As in all the rhymes of these singing games, there are 
variations to the words, but in this case the variants are 
usually of but very minor importance. The writing of the 
name with a pen and ink is doubtless quite a modern addi- 
tion ; it is usually " a gold pen." 

In some cases the rhyme is mixed up with fragments of 
courting games. Mrs. Gomme says: 

'* The additional ceremony of marriage in four of the games 
^ Clara M. Patterson, Proc. Belfast Nat. Field Club, 1893-94, p. 51. 



340 THE STUDY OF MAN 

is clearly an interpolation, which may have arisen from the cus- 
tom of playing love and marriage games at funerals and during 
the watching of the corpse, or may be a mere transition to the 
more pleasant task of love-making as the basis of a game. . . . 
The decay that has set in is apparent by the evident attempt 
to alter from ' green gravel ' to ' green grover ' and * yellow 
gravel,' and to introduce pen and black ink. The addition of 
incongruous elements from other games is a frequent occurrence 
in modern games, and is the natural result of decadence in the 
original form of the game. Altogether this game-rhyme affords 
a very good example of the condition of traditional games among 
the present generation of children." 

Those who would like to make acquaintance with the airs 
to which the words are sung, or who are interested in the 
various modifications, or who wish to study Mrs. Gomme's 
analysis of the game, are referred to the original monograph, 
from which I have so freely borrowed. 

Mrs. Gomme points out that green gravel and green grass 
indicate the locality of the scene. " Green," as applied to 
gravel, probably means freshly disturbed soil, just as a green 
grave means a freshly made grave. The tenant of the new 
grave is the well-loved lady of a disconsolate lover. 

The washing and dressing of the corpse, and putting an 
inscription on the place where it is laid, are indicated by the 
third and fourth lines. The widely spread incidents of 
washing a corpse in milk and dressing it in silk occur in the 
ballad of" Burd Ellen:" ' 

'' Tak up, tak up my bonny young son, 
Gar wash him wi' the milk ; 
Tak up, tak up my fair lady, 
Gar row her in the silk." 

The final couplet of " Green Gravel " is a funeral dirge, a 

* Jamieson, Ballads, p. 125. 



FUNERAL GAMES 34 1 

singing to the dead. In some versions a touching wail is 
added : 

" Oh, mother ! oh, mother ! do you think it is true ?" 

** Oh, yes, child ! oh, yes, child ! " 
"Then what shall I do ? " 

(Y\\.^ possibility of communion with the dead, which is in- 
dicated by the line, " He sent you a letter to turn round 
your head," is not inconsistent with primitive thought. To 
these simple souls the spirits of the dead are very real beings, 
and as Gomme has demonstrated in his Ethnology in Folk- 
lore, we have two strata of belief in this country ; the lower, 
pre-Aryan, belief, which is similar in its general character 
to that which is of almost universal occurrence, is based on 
the idea that the spirits of the dead are inimical to the 
living. Associated with this are numerous customs, such as 
the curious practice in Scotland of turning upside down all 
the chairs in the room from which the corpse has just been 
taken;* or in England of unhinging the gate and placing it 
across the entrance, and of carrying the corpse to the grave 
by a roundabout w^ay.' There is also the practice in Scot- 
land of keeping up a dance all night after a funeral,^ which 
by the analogous practice among the Nagas, a non-Aryan 
tribe of Southern India, must be attributed to the desire to 
get rid of the spirit of the deceased." In the west of Kerry, 
in Ireland, a broad lineis whitewashed round the windows 
and door of a house in which there has been a death, so that 
the spirit may not return. 

The later stratum is the Aryan worship of deceased an- 
cestors, and this cult of the dead, based on the love of dead 

' Folk-lore Record, ii., p. 214. 
^ Frazer, in yoiirn. Afith. Inst., xv. , p. 72. 

^ Napier, Folk-lore of West of Scotland, p. 66 ; Folk-lore yournal, iii., p. 
281 ; Pococke's Tour through Scotland, 1760, p. 88. 
* Owen's Notes on the Naga Tribes, p. 23. 



342 THE STUDY OF MAN 

kindred, is found generally prevalent over the country, 
whereas the above-mentioned cult, which is based on the 
fear of dead kindred, is found only in isolated patches of 
the country/ In the present instance the relations between 
the dead and the living are of a friendly nature, but in the 
last game we noticed that in several versions the ** ghost " 
of the deceased " Jenny " chased the frightened mourners. 

In confirmation of this being a representation of an old 
funeral ceremony, it may be pointed out that the action of 
turning backwards during the singing of the dirge is also 
represented in the curious funeral ceremony called ** Dish- 
a-loof," which is thus described by Henderson: " All the 
attendants going out of the room, return into it backwards, 
repeating this rhyme of ' saining.' " ' 

I cannot now enter into a discussion of this ceremony and 
the chant in question ; suffice it to say that " Dish-a-loof " 
is also found in children's games. 

In several versions of these funeral games, love-making is 
added, and it is difficult to determine whether this is a de- 
generate feature which has crept into the game (for we 
often find a mixture taking place in these games), or whether 
it was an original element that has been sporadically retained. 

Festivity at a funeral may seem out of place to us, but 
one must remember that different men have different man- 
ners, and what may appear incongruous to some people 
passes unnoticed among others. 

The mixture that appears in some of the singing games of 
children of mourning and courting, of death and marriage, of 
solemnity and frivolity, is not due to lack of sensibility on 
the part of the children ; it is no sign of a natural depravity, 
but it is probably in many cases merely a survival. Children 
must play the old games and repeat the old rhymes, and 

' G. L. Gomme, Ethnology in Folk-lore^ 1892, p. 125. 
^ Folk-lore of the Northern Counties, p. 53. 



FUNERAL GAMES 343 

they do so as faithfully as they can. Conscious departure 
from custom is often regarded as a kind of moral delinquency, 
it is, in fact., a species of sacrilege. This conservatism of 
children and of the folk is the sheet-anchor of folk-lore. 

We have only to cross the Irish Sea to find that the Eng- 
lish children are not singular in this association of comedy 
with tragedy. 

Croker ' says : 

The wake of a corpse is a scene of merriment rather than of 
mourning. ... In the evening a general assembly of the neigh- 
bours takes place, when they are entertained with whiskey, to- 
bacco, and snuff. On these occasions songs are sung and stories 
related, while the younger part of the company beguile the time 
with various games and sports, such as blind man's buff or hunt 
the slipper. Dancing, or rather running in a ring round an indi- 
vidual, who performs various evolutions, is also a common amuse- 
ment ; and four or five young men will sometimes, for the diversion 
of the party, blacken their faces and go through a regular series of 
gestures with sticks, not unlike those of the English morris danc- 
ers. Amongst the games played at wakes are two which I have 
never observed out of Ireland, and from their being so universal 
with the peasantry, they are probably of considerable antiquity. 
One of these is called ' The Walls of Troy,' and the other ' Short 
Castle.' " 

The former game is a very old English game, which is 
generally known as " Nine Men's Morris." ' 

Lady Wilde ^ gives a somewhat similar account of " Wake 
Games." She refers to " Shuffle the Brogue " (" Hunt the 
Slipper "), " The Horse Fair," and " The Mock Marriage." 
Lady Wilde says that nothing irreverent is meant, for it is 

^ T. Crofton Croker, Researches in the South of Ireland, 1824, p. 170. 
^ A. B. Gomme, Traditional Games, p. 414 ; the diagram on p. 418 is the 
same as that given by Croker on p. 171. 

** Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland, 1890, p. I2g. 



344 ^^-^ STUDY OF MAN 

considered that whatever keeps up the spirits at a wake is 
allowable, and harmless in the sight of God. In towns the 
fun often degenerates into licence and drinking, and many 
games have been therefore forbidden by the priesthood, 
particularly the one called " The Mock Marriage," which 
often gave occasion for much scandal, and tumult and fight- 
ing amongst the young men ; whereas, in the country wake, 
it would be deemed a disgrace for a man to create a disturb- 
ance or even to lose his temper, and the women and young 
girls were treated with the utmost respect. 

"iWake ceremonies are still held in the Irish cabins, where the 
men drink and smoke, and tell ancient stories, though the highly 
dramatic games of former times have almost entirely died out, 
* for,' as the peasant narrator added, when concluding his ac- 
count of the scenes he had witnessed in his early youth, ' there is 
no mirth or laughter to be heard any more in the country, the 
spirit has gone from our people, and all the old fun is frozen, 
and the music is dumb in poor Ireland now.' " 

We know that in the prehistoric times in Ireland, famous 
inter-tribal games were held near some of the tumuli of de- 
parted heroes or kings, similar to the funeral games of 
Patroclus that Homer has immortalised. 

It is a question for future research whether some of our 
games may not have had this origin and have subsequently 
been divorced from the funeral festival. If this can be 
shown to have been the case, then it is probable that certain 
of these games will be found to have had a magical or a 
symbolic significance which is at present entirely unsus- 
pected. 

One version of " Jenny jo " ends with: 

" Poor Jinny jo is dead and gone, dead and gone, dead and gone, 
Poor Jinny jo is dead and gone, all the day long. 



FUNERAL GAMES 345 

** We 've come to wake Jinny jo, Jinny jo, Jinny jo, 
We 've come to wake Jinny jo, all the day long. 

" Jinny jo has candles round her head," &c/ 

The wake and candles are probably an Irish innovation ; 
at all events, an old Irish nurse remembered only the fol- 
lowing fragment of " Jenny jo " : 

" Jenny jo 's dead and gone, dead and gone, dead and gone, 
Jenny jo 's dead and gone, all the day long. 
Pipes and tobacco for Jenny jo, Jenny jo, Jenny jo, 
Pipes and tobacco for Jenny jo, all the day long." 

Miss M. Hayden, who gave me this and several other Irish 
games, writes : ' * The ' pipes and tobacco ' seem rather odd, ' ' 

There are two explanations: the obvious one is that the 
tobacco is for the wake. We have seen that Croker refers 
to this custom, and Lady Wilde says: " There is always a 
plateful of tobacco and another of snuff placed on a table 
by the side of the corpse, and each man as he enters is 
expected to fill his pipe and pray in silence for a few 
moments." ' 

The rhyme says that the pipes and tobacco are for ** Jenny 
jo," that is, for the deceased person. Last year my friend 
Mr. R. Welch, the well-known landscape photographer of 
Belfast, took some photographs of an old graveyard at Sal- 
ruck, Little Killary, West Galway, on some graves of which 
were deposited a large number of pipes, some quite new and 
still with the shavings with which they were packed in the 
bowl, others filled with tobacco. Were these offerings to 
the spirits of the deceased ? An Irish journal indignantly 
denied that this occurred, and accused Mr. Welch of him- 
self putting the pipes there in order to produce a photograph 

' " The Wares of Autolycus," Pall Mall Gazette, Jan. i8, 1897, p. 10. 
' Loc. cit., p. 134. 



346 THE STUDY OF MAN 

that would appeal to the English tourist. Mr. Welch, 
however, was vindicated, and we may charitably assume 
that the writer was ignorant that this custom was fairly 
common in Mayo and North Galway. I mention this cir- 
cumstance, as facts which appear to tell against the intelli- 
gence of a sensitive people may be publicly denied, though 
they occur all the same. 

The distribution of tobacco and pipes is stated to be an 
act of hospitality to those who attend the funeral on the 
part of the deceased's relatives, who could not entertain 
such a large number in an ordinary way at home. The idea 
current among the people who smoke the pipes in the grave- 
yard at the funeral is that it is unlucky to take them away. 
Why unlucky, if not the survival of a custom older than 
pipes in Ireland ? 
\The custom of leaving some of the belongings of the de- 
ceased person, or of placing offerings, sometimes of food 
only, at the grave, is so widely spread among backward 
peoples that it is superfluous to multiply examples. I will 
give merely a single instance that came under my own ob- 
servation at Cape York in North Queensland. On the 
grave of a native was the stretcher that had carried him to 
his last resting-place, at the head and foot of the grave were 
two posts, on to the top of the latter was tied a handker- 
chief, and on to the top of the former a second handkerchief 
and the pipe of the deceased, and close by was his tin 
" billy." It was very pathetic to see the belongings of the 
poor man put by his side ready for the use of his spirit, or 
perhaps it was the spirits of the objects which were for the 
use of the spirit of the man. 

And now I must close — not because I have exhausted the 
subject — indeed, I have touched on only a few of the prob- 
lems that the toys and games of children suggest — but be- 
cause I have come to an end of my space. We are now 



FUNERAL GAMES 347 

discovering the fact that if only we have the understanding, 
we can learn much of the past history of man from a study 
of our children. Two thousand years ago, as in our own 
days, might be seen " children sitting in the market-places, 
which call unto their fellows and say, * We piped unto you, 
and ye did not dance; we wailed, and ye did not mourn.' " 
This lament might well have been made to their elders — 
but at last we are beginning to heed their piping and their 
wailing. 



CHAPTER XVI 

PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS FOR CONDUCTING 

ETHNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

IN THE BRITISH ISLANDS 

AN influential committee was appointed by the British 
Association in 1892 to conduct an ethnographical sur- 
vey of the United Kingdom. 

COPY OF FIRST CIRCULAR 

" Sir, — The above-named Committee, in pursuance of the ob- 
ject for which they have been delegated by the Society of Anti- 
quaries of London, the Folk-lore Society, the Dialect Society, 
and the Anthropological Institute, and appointed by the British 
Association, propose to record for certain typical villages and the 
neighbouring districts : 

" (i) Physical types of the inhabitants. 

(2) Current traditions and beliefs. 

(3) Peculiarities of dialect. 

(4) Monuments and other remains of ancient culture ; and 

(5) Historical evidence as to the continuity of race. 

" As a first step the Committee desire to form a list of such 
villages in the United Kingdom as appear especially to deserve 
ethnographic study, out of which a selection might afterwards be 
made for the survey. The villages or districts suitable for entry 
on the list are such as contain not less than a hundred adults, the 
large majority of whose forefathers have lived there as far back 
as can be traced, and of whom the desired physical measure- 
ments, with photographs, might be obtained. 

348 



ETHNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 349 

" It is believed by the Committee that such villages may exist 
in the districts with which you are acquainted, and as you are 
eminently capable of affording help in this preliminary search, 
we have to request that you will do so by kindly furnishing the 
names of any that may occur to you, with a brief account of 
their several characteristics, mentioning at the same time the ad- 
dresses of such of their residents as would be likely to support 
the Committee in pursuing their inquiry. 

** They would also be glad to be favoured with the names of 
any persons known to you in other districts to whom this circular 
letter might with propriety be addressed." 

In January, 1894, another circular was issued from which 
the following is extracted : 

*' They are sure you will excuse their urging what may at first 
sight appear to be trivial details, but which are in reality of great 
practical importance to those who have to arrange and consult a 
large collection of communications from different persons. These 
are, that the communications should all be written on foolscap 
paper, and that the writing should be on one side only of the 
page, and should never run so near the margin as to be an ob- 
stacle to future binding. 

" The Committee are satisfied that the value of the returns will 
be much reduced if they do not give information under all the 
several heads. If it should happen, therefore, that your own 
pursuits or means of information do not enable you to fill up the 
whole of the forms desired, they would take it as a particular 
favour if you could induce friends to supply the missing details, 
and thus to render the information complete. 

" The Committee, in addressing you individually, wish to dis- 
claim any idea of interfering with the action of local societies, 
from many of which, on the contrary, they have reason to expect 
very valuable assistance. If it should suit your convenience to 
present to your local society an even fuller account of your ob- 
servations than may be necessary to comply with the require- 



350 THE STUDY OF MAN 

ments of this Committee, such a course would be highly desir- 
able, and it is hoped that the local societies will, on the other 
hand, give to the observers in their several districts all the en- 
couragement and moral assistance that may be found practicable. 
" All communications should be addressed to ' The Secretary 
OF THE Ethnographic Survey, British Association, Burlington 
House, London, W.' " ' 

The work done by this committee will be found in the 
reports of the Association, but as yet no systematic survey 
of the British Islands has been attempted. The ethno- 
graphical survey of Ireland has been undertaken by a 
Dublin committee, which is supported by the Royal Irish 
Academy, and four comprehensive reports ' have been pub- 
lished by that body. These reports are drawn up on the 
following lines: 

I. Physiography of the dist7'ict investigated. II. Anthropo- 
graphy. — i. Methods; 2. Physical characters with lists of 
measurements; 3. Vital statistics (general and economic), 
(a) Population, (b) Acreage and Rental, (c) Language and 
Education, (d) Health; 4. Psychology; 5. Folk Names. 

III. Sociology. — I. Occupations; 2. Family Life and Cus- 
toms; 3. Food; 4. Clothing; 5. Dwellings; 6. Transport. 

IV. Folk-lore. — i. Customs and Beliefs; 2. Legends and 
Traditions; 3. Leechcraft. V. Archceology. — i. Survivals; 
2. Antiquities. VI. History. VII. Ethnology, VIIL 
Bibliography. 

* " The Ethnography of the Aran Islands, County Galway." by Prof. A. C. 
Haddon and Dr. C. R. Browne, Proc. Roy. Irish Acad. (3rd ser.), ii., 1893^ 
pp. 768-830, pis. xxii.-xxiv. ; "The Ethnography of Inishbofin and Inish- 
shark. County Galway," by Dr. C. R. Browne, loc. cit., iii., 1894, pp. 3I7-370, 
pis. viii., ix. ; " The Ethnography of the Mullet, Inishkea Islands and Porta- 
cloy, County Mayo," by Dr. C. R. Browne, loc. cii., iii., 1895, pp. 587-649, 
pis. xv.-xvii. ; " The Ethnography of Ballycroy, County Mayo," by Dr. C. R. 
Browne, loc cit., iv., 1897, pp. 74-111, pis. iii., iv. ; "The Ethnography of 
Clare Island and Inishturk, County Mayo," by C. R. Browne, loc. cit., iv., 1898. 



ETHXOGRAPHICAL IXVESTIGATIOXS 35 I 

It will be evident ihat this is a somewhat ambitious pro- 
gramme, and although in many instances the information 
given on a particular subject is meagre, owing to the very 
limited time available for work in the field, it was considered 
best to keep to the general scheme in order to emphasise 
the fact that in all investigations of this kind the widest 
possible outlook must be maintained. 

I. — INSTRUCTIONS FOR MAKING CERTAIN SOMATOLOGICAL 

OBSERVATIONS 

I . Hair arid Eye Colours 

I have already (pp. 23-26) given an account of Dr. Bed- 
doe's methods of recording the colours of the hair and eyes ; 
it only remains to add a few practical hints which I also cull 
from The Races of Britain (p. 4) : 

" When unable to decide in which of two columns {e. ^., b or d) 
an individual ought to be inscribed, I divide him between the two, 
by a Solomonian judgment, and set down-^, or .5, in each of them. 

" When engaged in this work, I set down in his proper place 
on my card of observation every person (with the exceptions to 
be mentioned presently) whom I meet, or who passes me within 
a short distance, say from one to three yards. As a rule I take 
no note of persons who apparently belong to the upper classes, 
as these are more migratory and more often mixed in blood. I 
neglect those whom I suppose to be under age — fixing the point 
roughly at eighteen or twenty for men, seventeen or eighteen for 
women — as well as all those whose hair has begun to grizzle. 
Thus I get a fairly uniform material to work upon, though doubt- 
less the hair of most people does darken considerably between 
twenty and forty or fifty. In order to preserve perfect fairness, 
I always examine first, out of any group of persons, the one who 
is nearest, rather than the one to whom my attention is most 
drawn. Certain colours of the hair, such as red, certain shades 



352 THE STUDY OF MAN 

of the eye, such as light grey, can be discerned at a very con- 
siderable distance; but I take no note of anyone who does not 
approach me so nearly that I can recognise the more obscure 
colours. Much allowance needs to be made for the varying 
effects of light. Direct sunlight is better avoided when possible; 
I always choose the shady side of a street on a sunny day. Con- 
siderable difficulties are created by the freaks of fashion. I once 
visited Friesland, in order to study the physical type of that 
region. Conceive my disappointment when I found myself sur- 
rounded by comely damsels and buxom matrons, not one of 
whom suffered a single yellow hair to stray beyond her lace cap 
or silver-gilt head-plate. When I began to work in England dark 
hair was in fashion among women; and light and reddish hues 
were dulled with greasy unguents. In later years fair hair has 
been more in vogue; and golden shades, sometimes unknown to 
nature, are produced by art. Among men, on the other hand, 
the close cropping of the head, borrowed from the French, makes 
comparisons difficult. Fortunately, most vagaries of this kind 
are little prevalent in the classes, among whom I seek my material. 
" It may be objected that there is no security that many of the 
persons observed may not be aliens to the place or neighbour- 
hood wherein they are encountered. Certainly; there is no such 
security. But if a sufficient number of observations be secured, 
and the upper and other notoriously migratory classes (who are 
mostly easy of recognition) be excluded, the probability is im- 
mense that the great majority of the remainder have been born 
within a moderate radius of the centre of observation; and the 
•majority will determine the position of the community in my 
chromatic scale." 

Personally I am rather inclined to think it would be a 
good plan, when marking the " niger " column, to make a 
slightly different mark for those cases in which the hair is 
known to be absolutely black, i. e,, when it shows black 
under all conditions of light and when quite dry. 

Many opportunities present themselves for collecting 



E THNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGA TIO^S 



353 



these statistics, such as market-days, village flower-shows, 
local festivals and sports, the '' Hinds' hirings " of North- 
umberland, i. r. , those days when the farm labourers of both 
sexes come into the towns to hire out themselves for the 
following year. When groups are being photographed, or 
individuals measured, a small crowd generally collects, and 
one of the party can be told off to unobtrusively make 
notes of the colours of the eyes and hair of onlookers. 

The markings on the cards should always consist of short, 
firm strokes (dots are less satisfactory) ; it is best never to 
put numbers. Each group of cards should be kept in 
labelled envelopes. A little method and system is a great 
saving of time in the end, and the results are more likely 
to be trustworthy if system is made into habit. 

ADULTS.— MALES.i 



- 


EYES. 


TOTALS. 


PERCENTAGE 


HAIR. 


Light. 


Medium. 


Dark. 


HAIR COLOURS. 


Red 


4 

8 

8o 

27 


I 

3 

6 

I 


2 

I 
I 


5 
8 

85 
34 

2 


3-73 

5-97 

63-43 

25-37 

1.50 


Fair 


Brown 


Dark 

Black 




Totals 


119 


II 


4 


134 


100.00 


Percentage of eye colours . . 


88.80 


8.21 


2.99 


100.00* 





Index of Nigrescence, 18.57. 

The above table is an example of one way in which 
the results can be tabulated ; a similar table should be made 

' A. C. Haddon and C. R. Browne, " The Ethnography of the Aran Islands, 
County Galway," Proceedings Royal Irish Academy (3), ii., 1893, p. 783. 
23 



354 ^^^ STUDY OF MAN 

for Females, Boys, and Girls. These can be combined in 
various ways afterwards. 

It is occasionally a matter of local belief — or it may come 
out in the observations — that the inhabitants of one village, 
or of an island, are lighter or darker, as the case may be, or 
vary in some other way from the neighbouring locality. 
All such supposed or real variations should be worked out 
on special tables. It is well not to use the recording cards 
for more than one occasion or for more than one village. 

2. Anthropometry for British Ethnography. 

I have kept the instructions for collecting the hair and eye 
colours distinct from the other ethnographical data, as these 
can so readily be made anywhere by anybody, whereas the 
following data, for the most part, require the employment 
of instruments and a little preparatory training. 

The schedule on pp. 356, 357 is that drawn up by the 
Ethnographical Survey Committee of the British Associa- 
tion. Copies of this, for field observation, can be obtained 
from the Secretary of the Committee, E. S. Hartland, Esq., 
Highgarth, Gloucester. 

Directions for Measurement, 

" Instrument Required for these Measure?ne7tts. — The ' Travel- 
ler's Anthropometer, ' manufactured by Aston & Mander, 61 Old 
Compton Street, London, W.C. ; price, ^^3 3^. complete; without 
2-metre steel, measuring-tape and box footpiece, jQ2 10s. With 
this instrument all the measurements can be taken. In a per- 
manent laboratory it will be found convenient to have a fixed 
graduated standard for measuring the height, or a scale affixed 
to a wall. For field work a tape measure may be temporarily 
suspended to a rigid vertical support, with the zero just touching 
the ground or floor. A 2-metre tape, a pair of folding calli- 
pers, a folding square, all of which are graduated in millimetres. 



ETHNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 355 

and a small set-square can be obtained from Aston & Mander for 
;£i 6s. ; with this small equipnient all the necessary measurements 
can be taken. 

" Height Sta7idi?ig. — The subject should stand perfectly up- 
right, with his back to the standard or fixed tape, and his eyes 
directed horizontally forwards. Care should be taken that the 
standard or support for the tape is vertical. The stature may be 
measured by placing the person with his back against a wall to 
which a metre scale has been affixed. The height is determined 
by placing a carpenter's square or a large set-square against the 
support in such a manner that the lower edge is at right angles to 
the scale; the square should be placed well above the head, and 
then brought down till its lower edge feels the resistance of the 
top of the head. The observer should be careful that the height 
is taken in the middle line of the head. If the subject should 
object to take off his boots, measure the thickness of the boot- 
heel, and deduct it from stature indicated in boots. 

" Height Sitting. — For this the subject should be seated on a 
low stool or bench, having behind it a graduated rod or tape 
with its zero level with the seat; he should sit perfectly erect, 
with his back well in against the scale. Then proceed as in 
measuring the height standing. The square should be employed 
here also if the tape against a wall is used. 

" Length of Cranium. — Measured with callipers from the most 
prominent part of the projection between the eyebrows (glabella) 
to the most distant point at the back of the head in the middle 
line. Care should be taken to keep the end of the callipers 
steady on the glabella by holding it there with the fingers, while 
the other extremity is searching for the maximum projection of 
the head behind. 

" Breadth of Cranium. — The maximum breadth of head, which 
is usually about the level of the top of the ears, is measured at 
right angles to the length. Care must be taken to hold the in- 
strument so that both its points are exactly on the same horizon- 
tal level. 

" Face Length. — This is measured from the slight furrow which 



356 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



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E THNO GRA PHICA L INVES TIG A TIONS 



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358 THE STUDY OF MA.V 

marks the root of the nose, and which is about the level of a line 
drawn from the centre of the pupil of one eye to that of the other, 
to the under part of the chin. Should there be two furrows, as 
is often the case, measure from between them/ 

" Upper Face Length. — From root of nose to the interval be- 
tween the two central front teeth at their roots. 

" Face Breadth. — Maximum breadth of face between the bony 
projections in front of the ears. 

" Ifiterocular Breadth. — Width between the internal angles of 
the eyes. While this is being measured the subject should shut 
his eyes. 

" Bigonial Breadth. — Breadth of face at the outer surface of 
the angles of the lower jaw below the ears. 

" Nose Length. — From the furrow at root of nose to the angle 
between the nose and the upper lip in the middle line.^ 

" Breadth of Nose. — Measured horizontally across the nostrils 
at the widest part, but without compressing the nostrils. 

" Height of ILead. — The head should be so held that the eyes 
look straight forward to a point at the same level as themselves, 
/. <?., the plane of vision should be exactly horizontal. The rod 
of the anthropometer should be held vertically in front of the face 
of the subject, and the upper straight arm should be extended as 
far as possible and placed along the middle line of the head; the 
shorter lower arm should be pushed up to the lower surface of 
the chin. When measured with the square the depending bar 
must be held vertically in front of the face (with the assistance of 
the spirit-level or plumb-line), and the small set-square passed up 
this arm from below in such a manner that its horizontal upper 
edge will come into contact with the lower contour of the chin. 
The distance between the lower edge of the horizontal bar of the 
square and the upper edge of the set-square can be read off, and 
this will be the maximum height of the head. 

"" IL eight of Cranium. — The head being held in precisely th,e 
same manner as in measuring the height of the head, the instru- 
ment is rotated to the left side of the head, its upper bar still 
^ See special instructions for taking nasal measurements, pp. 366-368. 



E THNO GRA PHICA L IN VE S TIG A TIONS 359 

resting on the crown, and the recording arm (or the set-square) 
is pointed to the centre of the line of attachment of the small 
projecting cartilage in front of the ear-hole." 

Note. — It is essential that these rules should be strictly followed 
in order to secure accuracy. All measurements must be made in 
millimetres. If possible, the subject's weight should be obtained, 
and recorded in the place set apart for remarks. The observer 
is recommended to procure Notes and Que^-ies o?i Aftf /tropology, 2d 
edition, from the Anthropological Institute, 3 Hanover Square, 
London, W. Net price, 2>^. 6d. 

I have printed the schedule verbatim, v^^ith the exception of 
the addition of the line relating to the length of time the sub- 
ject's mother's people have resided in that particular district. 

The vagueness of the question, ** What district do your 
father's (or mother's) people come from ? " is better for our 
purpose than any more precise question would be, as it gives 
us just the information w^e require. For example, if with 
specious exactitude we asked a subject where he was born, 
and he replied " Cambridge," then where his parents were 
born, it might be "Cambridge" for both; whereas his 
grandparents, on both sides, might have been North- 
country folk, and their forbears for many generations back. 
Now mere residence in Cambridge for two generations would 
not alter a Northumberland and Durham ancestry, provided, 
as we assume in this case, that no local intermixture had 
taken place. People usually know, in a general sort of way, 
where their " people " lived some generations ago, and our 
apparently vague question gets directly at this information. 

The " surname of your father " is generally a superfluous 
question, but owing to some local peculiarities of naming 
people it is as well to retain it. 

The schedule is printed on paper of foolscap size, with 
the observations on one side and the directions on the 



360 THE STUDY OF MAN 

other. These are cumbersome in the field, and as field 
work should be undertaken only by those who have already 
had some experience, or, at all events, by those who have 
mastered the technique, there is no need to issue the instruc- 
tions on each sheet. I would therefore suggest that cards 
be employed about six inches in length and four inches in 
breadth, which might be printed as on opposite page. 

Similar schedules to these, but with the addition of some 
physical tests and with some minor alterations, are in use in 
the Anthropological Laboratory of the Cambridge Philo- 
sophical Society, and in that of Trinity College, Dublin. 

In Cambridge, the head height from the level of the ear- 
hole is alone taken ; for field work it is advisable, if possible, 
to take the total height of the head as detailed in the 
schedule. 

Head Measurements. — The height of the cranium is the 
same as the altitudinal auricular radius of the card used in 
Ireland. The schedule explains how this may be obtained 
by projection, as it is termed : but in Ireland we use a 
modification of Busk's craniometer that was introduced by 
Professor Cunningham,^ by means of which we take the 
radii from the level of the ear-holes to the greatest vertical 
height of the head, to the nasion, and to the insertion of 
the upper front teeth in the gums (alveolus). This instru- 
ment is very convenient to use, and gives accurate measure- 
ments; it is made so as to take to pieces, and is therefore 
quite portable. A further advantage is that analogous 
measurements can be made on skulls; the disadvantage is 
the dislike some people have to anything being inserted in 
their ears. An extended experience in Ireland shows that 
very few refuse pointblank to the instrument being used, 
and most make no objection whatever. 

^ C. R. Browne, "Some New Anthropometrical Instruments," Proc. Roy. 
Irish Acad. (3), ii., 1892, p. 397. 



E THNO GRA PHICA L IX VE S TIG A TIONS 



361 



No. 



Dite. 



Locality Countj' 


Name 








Occupation 


Age 1 


Birthplace 






What district do your father's 


What district do your mother's 
people come from ? 








TT • J Red, Fair, Brown, Dark, Jet Black, 
^^""^ 1 Straight, Wavy, Curly 


T-< J Blue, Grey ; Green, Hazel ; Brown 
^y"1 Light; Medium; Dark :' " 




■p ( Long, Narrow ; Aledium ; Short, Broad 

^^ 1 Cheek-bones— (i) inconspicuous, (2) prominent. .. 




Ears - -^' ^^^ • ^' outstanding 

'( Lobes — (i) absent, (2) present 


Nose — Length.. 


Breadth . . ' Profile 


Head— Length . 


Breadth . . Height.... 

1 



Face. 



Length. 



Upper Face 
Length 



Breadth. 



Interocular 
Breadth. 



Bigonial 
Breadth. 



Auricular radii. 


Altitudinal j 

i 




Xasal . . 




Alveolar. . 




Height I 

Standing \ 




Height I 
Sitting S 




Weight 




Hand 


Forearm 




Span 





Cephalic Index. 



Total Facial Index. 



Length — Height Index... 




1 
Upper Facial Index 


Breadth Height Index 1 


Nasal Index 













362 THE STUDY OF MAN 

There is no need for me to say more about the cephalic 
index or the method of obtaining it ; but it is desirable that 
the question should be determined of the ratio of the 
cephalic index (that is, the index of the living head) to the 
cranial index (or the index of the skull). This matter 
has received the attention of many anthropologists, and has 
recently been discussed by Dr. W. Z. Ripley.^ Most an- 
thropologists follow Broca, and add two units to the cranial 
index to obtain the cephalic index; thus a skull having a 
length-breadth index of 78 would correspond to a cephalic 
index of 80 in the living subject. Tappeiner, in the Tyrol, 
finds differences from i to 5 units; Mantegazza allows 3 
units; Zampa allows 2.5 units; Boas allows 1.4 for Ameri- 
can Indians; Livi allows 1.3 for Italians; Mies allows i.ii 
for men and .85 for women, with a tendency to increase 
among brachycephals; Topinard allows -|- of a unit; Weis- 
bach and Zuckerhandl allow only -^-^ of a unit ; whereas 
Virchow says no correction is needed, as the two are practi- 
cally equal. Ripley believes that the difference is nearer 1.5 
than 2 units. '^ 

The German system of craniometry, taken as it is from 
an artificial base, does not correspond to the maximum 
length as taken directly by French, English, and American 
anthropologists, and so tends to increase the length-breadth 
index (by diminishing the length) as compared with the 
French. 

To reduce the German ratio to that of the French, one 
unit must be added to the German cranial indices (as, for 
example, in the measurements of Frisian crania made by 
Virchow and by Broca). If two units be added to the French 
cranial index to obtain the cephalic index, only one unit 

^ William Z. Ripley, " Notes et Documents pour la Construction d'une Carte 
de rindice Cephalique en Europe," L Anthropologie ^ vii., 1896, p. 513. 
'■^ Loc. cit. , p. 519. 



ETHNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 363 

must be added to the German cranial index to make it cor- 
respond with the French cephalic index; but owing to his 
special methods Welcker's indices average, as Ripley ^ 
points out, two units below other German indices. 

About the same time that Ripley had come to the fore- 
goingconclusion. Dr. Ammon ^ published a paper on the same 
subject, as the result of a very careful inquiry. As this is 
an important matter, I give Ammon's conclusions for the 
convenience of those who may wish to correlate the cranial 
measurements made by the two chief Continental schools. 

''Length. — To obtain the French length from German measure- 
ments add I mm. to the brachycephals (80-84.9) ^^^ hyper- 
brachycephals (85-89.9); i.i mm. to the mesaticephals (75-79.9) 
and ultra-brachycephals (90-94.9); 1.5 mm. to the dolichoce- 
phals (70-74.9), and 1.4 mm. to the extreme brachycephals 
(95-100). 

" Breadth. — Identical in both methods. 

" Ifidex. — The French index is obtained by deducting half a 
unit from the German index; or, to be more exact, deduct .6 
from the dolichocephals and .7 from the extreme brachycephals 
instead of .5. 

" Inversely, to transform the numbers obtained according to 
the French method into those of the German method, one must 
deduct I mm. from the length, etc., and add .5 to the index." 

Collignon points out ^ that one is too apt to attach to the 
terms dolichocephaly and brachycephaly a concrete sense 
which they should not have. 

Thus a human variety may by the proportions of the 
body and its members and by the characters of the face and 

^ Loc. cit., p. 520. 

^ Otto Ammon, " La Correlation entre I'indice cephalometrique de Broca et 
celui d'lhering," L Anthropologic, vii., 1896, p. 676. 
3 M^m. Soc. d'Anth. de Paris (3), i., 1895, p. 23. 



364 THE STUDY OF MAN 

the length of the skull, manifestly resemble a dolichoce- 
phalic race and yet have a cephalic index of 81 or 82. Or 
another variety may have a long and broad body, short legs, 
a low flat face and short head, and other characters of a 
brachycephalic people, and yet have a narrow head, giving 
an index of 78 or 79. Collignon would respectively allocate 
these aberrant varieties to the dolichocephals and to the 
brachycephals respectively. 

One knows that in a race as pure as possible there may 
be a range in the cephalic index of 13 units, that is to say, a 
pure race having a mean index of 84 may normally vary be- 
tween 78 and 90, and, inversely, a race having a mean index 
of JJ may oscillate between 71 and 83. 

There are thus normally, and without any foreign influ- 
ences, some individuals of a brachycephalic race who may 
be relatively dolichocephals, and, conversely, there may be 
brachycephalic individuals in a dolichocephalic race. 

When the mean anterio-posterior diameter of the cranium 
exceeds 190 mm. in the living, the head should be considered 
as long, and the race to which it belongs is ranged as a 
whole in the great dolichocephalic group, rather than in the 
group of brachycephalic races. It will be noted that Col- 
lignon for the sake of brevity of description ignores a mesati- 
cephalic group. 

Collignon gives ' the following examples : 

DOLICHOCEPHALIC POPULATIONS. 



HEAD CEPHALIC 

LENGTH. INDEX. 



80 Tunisians (Race of Djerid) 194.4 73 

41 Negroes of the Soudan 195-5 74 

100 Coast Tunisians 194-9 7^ 

20 Pure Arabs 193-3 77 

30 Mediterraneans 195-8 78 

100 Kymri (of France) i93-i 79 

' Loc. cit., p. 24. 



ETHXOGRAPHICAL IXVESTIGA TIOXS 365 



BRACHYCEPHALIC POPULATIONS. 



HEAD CEPHALIC 

LENGTH. INDEX. 



50 Tunisians (of Djerbah) 187.7 80.4 

1045 Manche (N. France) 188.3 83.0 

960 C6tes-du-Nord (") 1S7.2 83.6 

100 Celts (of France) 187.6 84.9 

On page yy of the same Memoir he suggests the index of 
82 for the Hmit of doHchocephaly and brachycephaly in the 
living subject. 

As these practical instructions are intended for ethno- 
graphical survey work in the field and not for craniological 
purposes, I will not give instructions for skull measurements, 
but will refer the reader to such works as Flower's Osteologi- 
cal Catalogue (Part I., *' Man ") of the Royal College of Sur- 
geons (1879); Garson, in Notes and Queries on Anthropology 
(1892) ; Topinard's Elements d' Anthropologie g^nerale (1885) ; 
Broca's Instructions crdnio^netriqiies (1876); De Quatrefages 
et Hamy's Crania Ethnic a {\ZZ2)\ Garson, " The Frankfort 
Craniometric Agreement, with Critical Remarks thereon," 
Jour. AntJi. Inst., xiv. , 1884, p. 64; Schmidt's Anthropolo- 
gische Methodeji iJ^Qi^zig, 1888), and ^IdiCdWstQr's Ajiatoniy ; 
Quain's Anatomy, etc. Professor Macalister is writing a 
book which will thoroughly cover this ground. 

The only skull measurements I have referred to are the 
length, breadth, and height, and the two measurements re- 
quired for the nasal index; the latter have been sufficiently 
described on page 95. The length of the skull is taken by 
the French, English, and American anthropologists from the 
glabella (the middle line between the brow-ridges) to the 
greatest diameter obtainable behind in the middle line; 
this gives the greatest obtainable mesial length. All anthro- 
pologists take the greatest breadth wherever found above 
the levels of the ear-holes ; care must be taken that the calli- 
pers are held at right angles to the median longitudinal 



2,66 THE STUDY OF MAM 

(sagittal) line, and that the two ends of the callipers are at 
the same level. The height of the skull is the diameter be- 
tween the basion (the middle point of the anterior edge of 
the foramen magnum) and the bregma (the point on the 
vertex where the frontal and interparietal sutures meet). 

Nasal Measurements. — Dr. R. CoUignon, who has paid 
more attention than any other anthropologist to the nasal 
index in the living, draws attention ^ to the great care that 
is required in taking the measurements, as, owing to the low 
units of the dimensions, even small differences in the method 
employed will lead to considerable differences in the results. 
The nasal index is an extremely delicate measurement, and 
it is only on account of its exceptional ethnological import- 
ance that it claims so much attention and trouble. 

We have already seen that the index is the ratio of the 
maximum breadth of the base of the nose, that is, of the 
wings of the nose, to its height, the latter being taken from 
the root to the point of insertion of the septum. 

There is no difBculty about the first measurement, except 
that care must be taken not to squeeze the wings and to 
guard against laughter, which often happens, and which 
gives a false platyrhiny by the distension of the nostrils.. 
Distension is also caused by breathing through the nostrils; 
this can be stopped by the subject keeping his mouth open. 

The second measurement is less easy, and in certain cases 
is of extreme difficulty owing to an uncertainty in selecting- 
the upper point of measurement. 

Among the great majority of Europeans the condition 
does not exist ; the origin of the root of the nose is generally 
seen at a glance with the greatest ease. It suffices to look 
at the face in profile, and to place one arm of the compass 
at the deepest point seen. But among the yellow or black 

' " La Nomenclature quinaire de Tindice nasal du vivant," Revue d'Anthro-' 
pologie{'i), ii., 1887, p. 8. 



ETHNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 367 

races and among some Europeans it is by no means the 
same; the line of the forehead very often passes on to the 
nose in a regular curve, which does not present any change 
of direction. In this case, Topinard recommends that the 
subject should be looked at full face ; usually one can dis- 
tinguish a slight horizontal fold which is the desired spot; 
or by stroking vertically from above downwards upon the 
skin of the lower part of the forehead, the fold is indicated 
in the great majority of cases with great clearness. This 
should be lightly marked with a pencil. 

To recapitulate : In order to determine the height of the 
nose, stand to the right of the subject and look at his pro- 
file ; if the exact spot where the root begins is clear, place 
the lower arm of the sliding compass against the angle 
which the septum makes with the upper lip, without press- 
ing it too much, and gently bring down the upper arm to 
the upper spot. If there is any doubt about the latter, 
press down the skin of the forehead with the left hand, 
always looking at the profile, so as to appreciate the change 
of direction which is produced, mark it, and proceed as 
above. 

Instead of the ordinary sliding compass, which may have 
sharp points, and which is usually difficult to use with pre- 
cision for these measurements, Collignon for many years has 
employed a small, light, box-wood sliding compass, which 
can be obtained from any French shoemaker, and which 
costs only i/r. 25 ^. 

It cannot be too strongly insisted upon that the subject 
must be measured in profile, as a measurement taken in full 
face is nearly always erroneous. 

One further detail must be added : It is necessary to hold 
the compass in the right hand, to apply first the lower arm 
against the septum and to hold it there, and gently to 
make the other arm descend to the upper point of measure- 



368 THE STUDY OF MAN 

ment. If one proceeds in the inverse manner, starting from 
above and drawing the sHding arm towards the septum, one 
draws down the skin, and so a lower figure is obtained for 
the nasal height. 

When possible, and always in those cases where there is 
no doubt, the measurement should be read to half a milli- 
metre. 

The naso-malar index, which was introduced by Oldfield 
Thomas,' is a very important addition to facial measure- 
ments, as it indicates the amount of the projection of the 
bridge of the nose. The basal line (bi-malar line) is meas- 
ured from the outer edge of each orbit, at a point on each 
side about 2 or 4 mm. below the fronto-malar suture in the 
skull, or from a corresponding point in the living. From 
these points another measurement is taken, this time with 
the tape, across the bridge of the nose. This is the naso- 
malar line. The difference in length between these two lines 
is due to the prominence of the bridge of the nose, the 
formula being: 

Naso-malar line X 100 ^ , 

— =Index. 

El-malar Ime 

The actual position of the two malar points is not very 
important, but great care must be taken that the two meas- 
urements are from exactly the same points, so it is well to 
mark them in the first instance. 

This index is proving one of great importance, and it has 
the great advantage of being fairly comparable in the living 
and on skulls. Sir William Flower suggested to Mr. Risley 
that he should employ it in India, and the former's prog- 
nostications as to its usefulness have been abundantly 
verified. 

' Oldfield Thomas, "Account of a Collection of Human Skulls from Torres 
Straits," Journ. Anth. Inst., xiv., 1885, p. 332, 



ETHNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 369 

Risley ' has proposed a modification of the classification 
adopted provisionally by Oldfield Thomas. I subjoin both 
of these : 

OLDFIELD THOMAS. RISLEY. 

— 107.5 Platyopic — 109.9 

107.5 ~ iio.o Mesopic no — 112.9 

no -{- Pro-opic 113 + 

The size of the schedules issued by the Ethnographical 
Committee of the British Association, and the numerous ob- 
servations required, have, it is feared, deterred many from 
undertaking this branch of the inquiry who might otherwise 
have been so disposed. The Committee, while urging that 
the full complement of observations should be taken when- 
ever possible, would be pleased if the short list on the fol- 
lowing page was filled up by observers all over the British 
Islands. 

The circumference of the head is taken with a steel or 
linen tape graduated in millimetres (the latter can be ob- 
tained for 6d. each). The measurement is taken immedi- 
ately above the eyebrows, beneath the ears, and round the 
greatest protuberance behind ; the tape should be drawn as 
tightly as possible, care being taken to include as little hair 
as possible. This is a difficult measurement to take on 
women's heads, but with care it can usually be done. 

Most people have an idea of their weight, and it is gener- 
ally possible for people to get themselves weighed without 
much difficulty. The weight should be reduced to pounds, 
and if not accurately made should be qualified by " about." 

The following few hints for field work may, perhaps, prove 
useful. Dr. Beddoe ^ writes: 

^ H. H. Risley, " The Study of Ethnology in India," Journ. Anth. Inst., 

XX., 1891, p. 255. 

^ The Races of Britain, p. 8. 
24 



370 



THE STUDY OF MAN 



1 


2 


2 


2 


2 


Affe 














Distric 
peop 


t from which Father's 
le come 














Distric 
peop 


t from which Mother's 
le come 














Hair 














Eves 














Shape 


of Nose 
















Length 










Head^ 


Breadth 












Index 






















Height 










Nose ^ 


Breadth 












Index 




















Circumference of Head 










Stature 
















Weigh 


t 















* This space can be utilised for the name of the locality where the observations are made. 
' These spaces are for the names of the subjects. 

Any additional information can be added underneath the "weight." The observer's 
name and address and the date should be written on the back or elsewhere. 



ETHNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 37 1 



» 



" I have spoken of the necessity and frequent difficulty of ob- 
taining the consent of the owner of the head to be examined. 
His reluctance may sometimes be overcome by means of money, 
without going to the extent of the new hat always jocularly de- 
manded in such cases. Sometimes other means have proved 
successful. I cannot resist detailing those by which I succeeded 
in obtaining a valuable series of head-measurements in Kerry. 
Our travelling party consisted of Dr. Barnard Davis, Dr. T. 
Wise, Mr. Windele, and myself. Whenever a likely little squad 
of natives was encountered the two archaeologists got up a dispute 
about the relative size and shape of their own heads, which I was 
called in to settle with the callipers. The unsuspecting Irishmen 
usually entered keenly into the debate, and before the little drama 
had been finished were eagerly betting on the sizes of their own 
heads, and begging to have their wagers determined in the same 
manner." 

Following the suggestion of Dr. Beddoe, when also in 
the west of Ireland, I told the natives that we had meas- 
ured a number of people in Dublin, and we wanted to see 
who were the taller and who had the larger heads. Gener- 
ally it is best to commence with the stature, as if it were 
wanted merely to find out who were the tallest men. Most 
people take a pride in having large heads, and so vanity 
paves the way for the cephalic measurements. The subject 
then becomes interested and amused, and the onlookers in- 
dulge in mild chaff, so that by one means or another not 
only can the above-mentioned measurements be taken, but 
others may be added. When the eye and hair colours and 
other physical features are noted, a very fair documental 
description of the individual has been secured. The subject 
is generally ready enough to be photographed, both full- 
face and side view, and a promise of a copy of his photo- 
graph will usually induce a recalcitrant person to submit to 
the entire operation. 



372 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Sometimes it will be found advantageous to explain why 
the measurements are wanted ; on other occasions this would 
be useless. One old man who had never been photographed, 
and who had refused the earnest entreaties of his family to 
have his portrait taken, sat in a chair to be measured, and 
I took a front and side view of his face before he realised 
what had happened, and when he found out he was very 
pleased. Many are the devices that have to be adopted, and 
varied the arguments employed to induce country folk to 
allow themselves to be measured. 

Photography. 

The following are the instructions issued by the Ethno- 
graphical Survey Committee with regard to photographing 
the typical inhabitants of a district : 

" Facial characteristics are conveniently recorded by means of 
photographs, taken in the three ways explained below. Amateurs 
in photography are now so numerous that it is hoped the desired 
materials may be abundantly supplied. At least twelve more or 
less beardless male adults and twelve female adults should be 
photographed. It will add much to the value of the portrait if 
these same persons have also been measured. The photographs 
should be mounted on cards, each card bearing the name of the 
district, and a letter or number to distinguish the individual por- 
traits; the cards to be secured together by a thread passing 
loosely through a hole in each of their upper left-hand corners. 
Three sorts of portrait are wanted, as follows: 

" (^) A few portraits of such persons as may, in the opinion of 
the person who sends them, best convey the peculiar character- 
istics of the race. These may be taken in whatever aspect shall 
best display those characteristics, and should be accompanied by 
a note directing attention to them. 

" {!)) At least twelve portraits of the left side of the face of as 
many different adults of the same sex. These must show in each 



ETHNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 373 

case the exact profile, and the hair should be so arranged as to 
show the ear. All the persons should occupy in turn the same 
chair (with movable blocks on the seat, to raise the sitters' heads 
to a uniform height), the camera being fixed throughout in the 
same place. The portraits to be on such a scale that the distance 
between the top of the head and the bottom of the chin shall in 
no case be les^ than i^ inch. Smaller portraits can hardly be 
utilised in any way. If the incidence of the light be not the same 
in all cases they cannot be used to make composite portraits. 
By attending to the following hints the successive sitters may be 
made to occupy so nearly the same position that the camera need 
hardly be refocussed. In regulating the height of the head it is 
tedious and clumsy to arrange the proper blocks on the seat by 
trial. The simpler plan is to make the sitter first take his place 
on a separate seat with its back to the wall, having previously 
marked on the wall, at heights corresponding to those of the 
various heights of head, the numbers of the blocks that should 
be used in each case. The appropriate number of the sitter is 
noted, and the proper blocks are placed on the chair with the 
assurance that what was wanted has been correctly done. The 
distance of the sitter from the camera can be adjusted with much 
precision by fixing a looking-glass in the wall (say five feet from 
his chair), so that he can see the reflection of his face in it. The 
backward or forward position of the sitter is easily controlled by 
the operator, if he looks at the sitter's head over the middle of 
the camera, against a mark on the wall beyond. It would be a 
considerable aid in making measurements of the features of the 
portrait, and preventing the possibility of mistaking the district 
of which the sitter is a representative, if a board be fixed above 
his head in the place of his profile^ on which a scale of inches is 
very legibly marked, and the name of the district written. This 
board should be so placed as just to fall within the photographic 
plate. The background should be of a medium tint (say a sheet 
of light brown paper pinned against the wall beyond), very dark 
and very light tints being both unsuitable for composite photo- 
graphy. 



374 ^^^ STUDY OF MAN 

" {c) The same persons who were taken in side face should be 
subsequently- photographed in strictly full face. They should 
occupy a different chair, the place of the camera being changed 
in accordance. Time will be greatly saved if all the side faces 
are taken first, and then all the full faces; unless, indeed, there 
happen to be two operators, each with his own camera, ready to 
take the same persons in turn. The remarks just made in respect 
to b are, in principle, more or less applicable to the present case; 
but the previous method of insuring a uniform distance between 
the sitter and the camera ceases to be appropriate. 

" It is proposed that composites of some of these groups shall 
be taken by Mr. Galton, so far as his time allows." 

Although it is advisable to adopt Dr. Francis Galton's 
suggestions, useful photographs can be obtained by having 
the lens of the camera on a line with the centre of the head, 
and by taking care that the sitter sits squarely in front or 
presents a true profile. It is important to provide oneself 
with a soft, neutral-coloured background which can be rolled 
up for transport. 

In order to get reliable data it is necessary to have a large 
number of workers in every part of the country. This is 
work which might well be undertaken by field clubs and 
other local societies; and I would also like to suggest that 
the local photographic societies should encourage the photo- 
graphic record by their members of all local objects and 
customs that have any anthropological or ethnographical in- 
terest, not omitting field portraits of typical inhabitants. 
There is so much to do, and so much is fast disappearing, 
that we require the assistance of as many societies and iso- 
lated workers as possible. 

In order that the work done may be known to the Com- 
mittee and a record of it filed for the use of students, all the 
completed schedules, or the published papers based thereon, 
and a copy of the photographs should be sent to the secre- 



ETHNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 375 

tary, who will eventually deposit them in an institution 
where they will be accessible to all students. 

II. — INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE COLLECTION OF FOLK-LORE 

^ Folk-lore is now a well-defined study, but there is still 
considerable ignorance in many minds concerning the sub- 
jects which are investigated, the methods of study, and the 
objects of these researches. 

Everywhere, and at all times, man has " attempted to 
explain the natural phenomena surrounding and affecting 
him. When such explanations are universally or generally 
accepted by any tribe or people they constitute the myth- 
ology and to sorrle extent the religious beliefs of such tribe 
or people." ^ 

Man is naturally profoundly affected and even modified 
by his environment ; the physical conditions of his country 
and climate, the nature of the vegetation and of the animal 
life around him all leave an impress on his character. 
The friendly as well as the inimical relations between man 
and man have given rise to rules to govern conduct and 
intercourse, and these have crystallised into custom. 
N When man changes from one condition to another he still 
clings to his old beliefs and customs, and should these in 
process of time cease to be as binding to him or as sacred as 
they were in the olden time, the memories of them will be 
preserved and related to the rising generation, to be again 
narrated to future generations. But in all civilised races 
there are less cultured people who have lagged behind in the 
march of civilisation and who still retain a greater or less 
amount of belief in the ancient traditions, and who practise 
old customs though it be but in an attenuated manner; 
these are the " folk," and it is their " lore " which is the 

' G. L. Gomme, The Handbook of Folk-lore, i8go, p, i. 



376 THE STUDY OF MAN 

subject of inquiry. In other words, it is a study of ** sur- 
vivals " or " relics of an unrecorded past." " Folk-lore 
contains the survivals of the oldest and rudest culture of 
man. 

The method of the study is the careful collection, " com- 
parison, and identification of the survivals of archaic beliefs, 
customs, and traditions in modern ages." 

The object of the study of folk-lore is to increase our 
knowledge about ourselves. The vast bulk of the materials 
of folk-lore date from the prehistoric period before know- 
ledge was committed to writing, and when it could only be 
perpetuated orally. As Mr. Hartland has said,^ " To this 
mode of preservation and communication, as well as to the 
things thus preserved and communicated, the name of tradi- 
tion is given, and folk-lore is the science of tradition." 
yThe study of folk-lore is not unlike that of vertebrate 
palaeontology. The palaeontologist comes across remains 
which are usually very imperfect ; by careful comparison 
with other fossils and with recent animals he can approxi- 
mately, and sometimes almost perfectly, recover the form 
of the extinct animal. In some cases it will be found to 
exactly resemble a living animal ; in others it will be differ- 
ent. This also is the method of the folk-lorist ; he checks 
his survivals by comparisons with the living beliefs and 
customs of savages, and the resemblances far outnumber 
the discrepancies. One might almost define folk-lore as 
" psychical palaeontology." 

The range of subjects comprised under folk-lore is very 
considerable ; superstitions connected with natural objects, 
goblindom, witchcraft, leechcraft, magic, and divination, be- 
liefs relating to a future life, and superstitions generally, 
may be classed under superstitious belief a7id practice. Fes- 

' G. L. Gomme, " Presidential Address," Folk-lore, ii., 1891, p. 9. 
''■ Report of a lecture in the Gloucestershire Chronicle, March 27, 1897. 



ETHNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 377 

tival customs, ceremonial customs, games, and local customs 
are grouped as traditional customs. Traditional narratives 
include hero-tales or sagas, which sometimes degrade into 
nursery tales or Marchen ; drolls, fables, and the like; 
myths of creation, deluge, fire, and doom ; ballads and 
songs ; place legends and traditions. Lastly, folk-sayings 
comprise jingles, nursery rhymes, riddles, proverbs, nick- 
names, and place-names. 

A general idea of the scope of folk-lore will be found in 
an excellent little book by Miss Marian Roalfe Cox, entitled 
An Introduction to Folk-lore. 

The following is the schedule that is issued by the Ethno- 
graphical Survey Committee: 



Place Na77ie of Observer 

CURRENT TRADITIONS AND BELIEFS. 

Folk-lore. 

" Every item of folk-lore should be collected, consisting of 
customs, traditions, superstitions, sayings of the people, games, 
and any superstitions connected with special days, marriages, 
births, deaths, cultivation of the land, election of local officers, or 
other events. Each item should be written legibly on a sepa- 
rate piece of paper, and the name, occupation, and age of the 
person from whom the information is obtained should in all cases 
be carefully recorded. If a custom or tradition relates to a par- 
ticular place or object, especially if it relates to a curious natural 
feature of the district, or to an ancient monument or camp, some 
information should be given about such place or monument. 
Sometimes a custom, tradition, or superstition may relate to a 
particular family or group of persons, and not generally to the 
whole population; and, in this case, care should be exercised in 
giving necessary particulars. Any objects which are used for 
local ceremonies, such as masks, ribbons, coloured dresses, 
etc., should be described accurately, and, if possible, photo- 



378 THE STUDY OF MAN 

graphed; or might be forwarded to London, either for permanent 
location or to be drawn or photographed. Any superstitions that 
are believed at one place and professedly disbelieved at another, 
or the exact opposite believed, should be most carefully noted. 

" The following questions are examples of the kind and direc- 
tion of the inquiries to be made, and are not intended to confine 
the inquirer to the special subjects referred to in them, nor to 
limit the replies to categorical answers. The numbers within 
parentheses refer to the corresponding articles in the Handbook 
of Folk-lore (published by Nutt, 270 Strand, London). 

(4) Relate any tradition as to the origin of mountains or as to 
giants being entombed therein. 
Are there any traditions about giants or dwarfs in the 

district ? Relate them. 
Is there a story about a Blinded Giant like that of Poly- 
phemus ? 
(13) Describe any ceremonies performed at certain times in 

connection with mountains. 
(16) Relate any traditions or beliefs about caves. 
(19) Are any customs performed on islands not usually in- 
habited ? Are they used as burial places ? 
(25) Describe any practices of leaving small objects, articles 

of dress, etc., at wells. 
(29) Are there spirits of rivers or streams ? Give their names. 

(32) Describe any practices of casting small objects, articles of 

dress, etc., in the rivers. 

(33) Are running waters supposed not to allow criminals or evil 

spirits to cross them ? 
(39) Describe any customs at the choosing of a site for building, 
and relate any traditions as to the site or erection of any 
building. 

(42) Is there a practice of sprinkling foundations with the 

blood of animals, a bull, or a cock ? 

(43) Does the building of a house cause the death of the 

builder ? 



ETHNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 379 

(48, 49, 50) Relate any traditions of the sun, moon, stars. 
(62) Describe the customs of fishermen at launching their 
boats. 



(63 
(66 

(84 

(85 

(86 

(87 
(90 

(98 

(105 
(no 

(132 

im 
(137 

(139 
(140 

(144 

(145 
(146 

(190 
(191 



Give any omens believed in by fishermen. 

Is it unlucky to assist a drowning person ? 

What ceremonies are performed when trees are felled ? 

Describe any custom of placing rags and other small ob- 
jects upon bushes or trees. 

Describe any May-pole customs and dances. 

Describe any customs of wassailing of fruit trees. 

Are split trees used in divination or for the cure of disease ? 

Describe any ceremonies used for love divination with 
plants or trees. 

Describe the garlands made and used at ceremonies. 

What animals are considered lucky and what unlucky to 
meet, come in contact with, or kill ? 

Describe any customs in which animals are sacrificed, or 
driven away from house or village. 

Describe customs in which men dress up as animals. 

Give the names of the local demons, fairies, pixies, 
ghosts, etc. Have any of them personal proper names ? 

Their habits, whether gregarious or solitary. Do they 
use special implements ? 

Form and appearance, if beautiful or hideous, small in 
stature, different at different times. 

Character, if merry, mischievous, sulky, spiteful, indus- 
trious, stupid, easily outwitted. 

Occupations, music, dancing, helping mankind, carrying 
on mining, agricultural work. 

Haunts or habitations, if human dwellings, mounds, bur- 
rows, mines, forests, boggy moorlands, waters, the 
underworld, dolmens, stone circles. 

Give the details of any practices connected with the 
worship of the local saint. 

Are sacrifices or offerings made to the local saint, on what 
days, and when ? 



380 THE STUDY OF MAN 

(192) What is the shrine of the local saint ? 

(210) Witchcraft. Describe minutely the ceremonies per- 
formed by the witch. What preliminary ceremony took 
place to protect the witch ? 

(294) Are charms used to find evil spirits and prevent their 

moving away ? 

(295) Are amulets, talismans, written bits of paper, gestures, 

etc., used to avert evil or to ensure good ? If so, how, 
when, where ? 

(297) Are skulls of animals, or horses, or other objects hung 

up in trees, to avert the evil eye and other malign in- 
fluences ? 

(298) What methods are employed for divining future events ? 

What omens are believed in ? 

(353) What superstitions are attached to women's work as such ? 

(356) Are women ever excluded from any occupations, cere- 
monies, or places ? 

(358) What superstitions are attached to the status of widowhood ? 

(366) Are particular parts of any town or village, or particular 
sections of any community, entirely occupied in one 
trade or occupation ? 

(368) Have they customs and superstitions peculiar to their 

occupation ? 

(369) Do they intermarry among themselves, and keep aloof 

from other people ? 
(373) Have they any processions or festivals ? 
(422) What parts of the body are superstitiously regarded ? 
(432) Are bones, nails, hair, the subject of particular customs 

or superstitions; and is anything done with bones when 

accidentally discovered ? 
(436) Is dressing ever considered as a special ceremonial; are 

omens drawn from accidents in dressing ? 

(452) Are any parts of the house considered sacred ? 

(453) Is the threshold the object of any ceremony; is it adorned 

with garlands; is it guarded by a horseshoe or other 
object ? 



\ 



ETHNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 38 I 

(454) Are any ceremonies performed at the hearth; are the 
ashes used for divination; is the fire ever kept burning 
for any continuous period ? 

(456) Is it unlucky to give fire from the hearth to strangers 
always, or when ? 

(467) Is there any ceremony on leaving a house, or on first oc- 
cupying a house ? 

(509) What are the chief festivals, and what the lesser festivals 
observed ? 

(515) Explain the popular belief in the object of each festival. 

(516) Describe the customs and observances appertaining to 

each festival. 
(540) When does the New Year popularly begin ? 

State the superstitions or legends known to attach to — 
{a) Halloween (both old and new styles). 
{Jb) May Eve. 

{c) Midsummer Day and St. John's Eve. 
(^) Lammas, or August ist. 
(^) New Year's Day. 
(/) Christmas. 
Is there any superstition as to the first person who enters a 
house in the New Year ? Is stress laid upon the colour 
of complexion and hair ? 
(567) What are the customs observed at the birth of children ? 
(588) Describe the ceremonies practised at courtship and 

marriage. 
(623) Describe the ceremonies at death and burial. 
(669) Describe any games of ball or any games with string, or 

other games. 
(674) Describe all nursery games of children. 
(686) Is there any special rule of succession to property ? 
{703) Is any stone or group of stones, or any ancient monument 

or ancient tree connected with local customs ? 
(706) Are any special parts of the village or town the subject of 
particular rights, privileges, or disabilities; do these 
parts bear any particular names ? 



382 THE STUDY OF MAN 

(711) Describe special local modes of punishment or of lynch 
law. 

(719) Describe special customs observed at ploughing, harrow- 
ing, sowing, manuring, haymaking, apple gathering, 
corn harvest, hemp harvest, flax harvest, potato gather- 
ing, threshing, flax-picking, and hemp-picking. 
" The collections under this head will be digested by Professor 

Rhys and the representatives of the Folk-lore Society." 

Miss Burne ^ has such an honourable reputation as a collec- 
tor of folk-lore that I cannot do better than reprint some of 
her valuable advice : 

" To begin with, we need a careful geographical examination 
of the habitats and boundaries of the various items of English 
folk-lore, such as the English Dialect Society has made and is 
making of dialectal boundaries. The results which may be ex- 
pected from the comparison of such a record of English folk-lore, 
with evidence obtained from other lines of study, seem to open a 
vista of possible discovery. There is nothing like speaking from ex- 
perience, so I will illustrate my meaning from personal knowledge. 

" It is generally customary in England to hire farm servants by 
the year, but the hiring-time varies in different places. In North- 
east Shropshire the hiring-time is Christmas; in South-west Shrop- 
shire it is May. I took great pains to pick out the boundary line 
between these two customs, market-town by market-town, and 
almost village by village, and I found it coincide almost exactly 
with the boundary line of the change of dialect between north- 
east and south-west, which is very marked; and very fairly also 
with the boundary between the diocese of Lichfield (the ancient 
bishopric of the Mercians) on the north-east, and the Welsh 
diocese of St. Asaph and the diocese of Hereford (the old 
kingdom of the Hecanas or Magesaetas) on the south-west.* 

^ Charlotte S. Burne, "The Collection of English Folk-lore," Folk-lore, i,, 
1890, p. 313. 

'■^ For a similar case of diocesan boundaries coinciding with tribal frontiers, 
see p. Ill, ante. 



ETHNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 383 

Moreover, the south-western custom of hiring prevails over a 
considerable part of North Wales, while hiring at Christmas pre- 
vails in Cheshire and North Staffordshire. 

*' Again, ' souling, ' or begging for apples, on the eve of All 
Saints' Day (November ist), is a common custom in that part of 
Shropshire where Christmas hirings occur, and in North Stafford- 
shire; but in South Staffordshire I believe the same custom is, or 
was, observed, not on All Saints' but on St. Clement's Eve 
(November 21st). Once more : In South Staffordshire and in 
South Shropshire, as far north as Shrewsbury, Mothering Sunday 
is known, if not observed; but I have never met with anyone in 
the north of either county who had heard of it. If such bound- 
aries were mapped out over the whole of England, and compared 
with other evidence, they would almost certainly yield valuable 
historical and ethnological results. 

"It is comparatively easy to pick out the boundaries of a 
custom, but very difficult to discover those of a superstitious 
opinion. Curious bits of superstition and * luck ' may be carried 
about the country in so many ways, to so many unexpected places, 
in a manner that would be impossible to a popular custom. You 
perhaps come across some old woman who strongly objects to 
your bringing, it may be snowdrops, or catkins, or perhaps haw- 
thorn, into her house, while her neighbours are not in the least 
offended by it. Now she may be the sole surviving depositary of 
a genuine piece of local folk-lore, or she may be following the in- 
structions of a grandmother who came from the other end of 
England, and she may be quite unable to tell you how she ac- 
quired her views on the subject. In many cases, I think, the 
collector can do no more than set down the name of the place 
where, or the informant from whom, he obtained the several 
items, without committing himself to any statement as to how far 
they are universal or not. 

" Negative evidence, again, is most difficult to obtain, but 
valuable in proportion to the difficulty of proving the negative. 
In fact, it can only be proved (as it has been remarked to me) if 
a collector gets hold of a thorough believer in the superstitions 



384 THE STUDY OF MAN 

of his locality, and can find out if there are any other supersti- 
tions of other localities which he decidedly does not believe in, 
any that he laughs at, any that he looks upon as stupid or ' super- 
stitious, ' while his own belief, of course, is not ' superstitious '! 

" For myself," continues Miss Burne, " I have not found that 
the English poor laugh at superstitions they are not acquainted 
with, unless they are, as many are, superior to superstition in gen- 
eral. They do not get farther than a slow, grave remark, ' No, I 
niver heered that. I shouldna think as there can be anything in 
that. Now, as to (so and so), that 's true, that is. For my gron- 
fayther knowed a mon . . .' etcetera! But it is beyond ques- 
tion that to ascertain what a superstitious man does 72ot, is quite 
as valuable for our purpose as to learn what he does know. Even 
then the collectors should not be too hasty in drawing conclu- 
sions. The information he fails again and again to obtain may 
some day crop up quite unexpectedly at his very doors. 

" The ideal of geographical collection would be reached if a 
number of collectors would undertake definite areas adjoining 
each other — say, for instance, the several hundreds of a county — 
would set down what is known, and what, after every possible 
inquiry, is not known there, and would then compare results." 

Miss Burne next discusses the question of the relations 
between folk-lore and history. ** The early history of every 
nation is dependent on oral tradition, not on written records, 
and so is open to doubt. But the questions, How much de- 
pendence may be placed upon tradition ? and How long the 
remembrance of an event may be preserved among unlet- 
tered people ? are by no means unimportant." She gives 
several examples, and comes to the conclusion that the 
folk, even in England, do preserve some memory of histori- 
cal events for three or even four centuries. 

The consideration of the influence of folk-lore on history 
naturally leads to the subject of the influence of history on 
folk-lore. Miss Burne instances the common Mummers' 



ETHNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 385 

Play, which " comes to us like a traveller from a journey, 
laden with curiosities collected by the way." 

A custom may die out in one parish and take a new lease 
of life in another owing to purely local and temporary 
causes. 

Miss Burne gives very valuable advice in the personal 
collecting of English folk-lore. 

" If you wish to understand folk-lore you must learn to under- 
stand the folk. You must know what the folk think, and how 
they act on subjects such as folk-lore touches, and observe how 
their minds form the natural background to the superstitions they 
act on, the customs they practise, the tales they tell." 

She gives numerous interesting examples of the mental 
attitude of the folk. 

Lastly, Miss Burne gives some very useful hints about 
the actual work of collecting. 

J" The best collecting is that which is done by accident, by 
living among the people and garnering up the sayings and stories 
they let fall from time to time. But one can hardly make a com- 
plete collection, even within a limited area, in this way, and 
deliberate search is therefore necessary. One needs first to know 
where to look, and the educated people of the neighbourhood 
cannot always help one. Too often the collector is met with the 
dignified repulse, ' Our people are not superstitious, I am glad 
to say ' ; and it is not given to everyone to be able to confute the 
assertion, as the Rev. Elias Owen, in a paper on ' Montgomery- 
shire Superstitions,' ^ relates that he once did. His errand in 
the parish where it was made was to inspect the schools, and at 
the close of his examination he asked the first class, * Now, child- 
ren, can you tell me of any place where there is a buggafi ' (a 
ghost or bogey) ' to be seen, or of anyone who has ever seen 
one ? ' Instantly every hand in the class was stretched out, and 
^ Montgomeryshire Collections, xv. , part i., p. 135. 
25 



386 THE STUDY OF MAN 

every child had a story to tell. He then asked, ' Which of you 
can tell me of a cure for warts ? ' with like results, greatly to the 
discomfiture of his friend the clergyman, who had fondly im- 
agined there was no superstition in his parish! The clergy are 
very liable to this illusion, because the people are apt to keep 
superstition out of their way, which in itself is a not uninstructive 
folk-loric item. Lawyers, doctors, and especially land-agents 
and gentlemen-farmers are often much better able to help than 
are the clergy. 

" When visiting a strange place with the set purpose of per- 
sonal collecting, the best way of beginning is, perhaps, to get the 
parish clerk or sexton to show the church, and then to draw him 
out on bell-ringing and burying customs, and to obtain from him 
the names of the ' oldest inhabitants ' for further inquiry. Fail- 
ing the sexton, the village inn-keeper might be a good starting- 
point. Then a visit may be paid to the school in the midday 
' recess,' and the children may be bribed to play all the games 
they know. Possibly some bits of local legend may be gleaned 
from them as a foundation for future inquiries. 

" Old household or family customs are best preserved in soli- 
tary farmhouses, especially if tenanted by the same family for 
several generations. But it is a mistake to think that a very 
remote and thinly populated parish will necessarily yield more 
folk-lore of all kinds than another. A scanty stay-at-home popu- 
lation does not preserve legends well, and has not esprit de corps 
sufficient for the celebration of public customs. A large village, 
or a market-town quite in the country, is generally the best place to 
find these; and the * lowest of the people ' — the chimney-sweepers, 
brick-makers, besom-makers, hawkers, tinkers, and other trades 
in which work is irregular — are those who keep up old games, 
songs, dances, and dramatic performances. Most villages have 
their doctress, generally an intelligent old woman, who, never- 
theless, mixes something of superstition with her remedies. 

" Superstitious opinions, though they flourish most, of course, 
among the lower classes, cannot well be collected direct from 
them, because they really do not understand what superstition is, 



ETHNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 38/ 

and cannot, as they say, ' make out what the gentleman is driving 
at.' They must be inquired for among the class of small em- 
ployers, who have a little more cultivation than their work-people, 
but yet live on terms of sufficient familiarity with them to know 
their ideas thoroughly and to share a good many of them! ^A 
little patient effort will in all probability enable the collector to 
make the acquaintance of some old grandfather or grandmother 
of this class, who, sitting in the chimney-corner of some old- 
fashioned kitchen, loves nothing better than to pour out tales of 
'old times.' Here is the collector's opportunity! . . . They 
are excellent company, these old people! if one can but get them 
to talk of their past lives,' and not of their present ailments; and 
they are dying around us every day, and their traditions are dying 
with them, for they have left off transmitting them to their child- 
ren. If the folk-lore of England is not recorded soon it will 
never be recorded at all, for these ' foot-prints in the sands of 
time ' are fast being trampled out by the hurrying feet of the 
busy multitudes of the Present." ^ 

The need for recording all local folk-lore is very pressing. 
In some districts, as in the Lincolnshire Cars, much still re- 
mains, as has been sympathetically recorded by Mrs. M. C. 
Balfour.' 

' "With the barren Cars of the older times is connected a peasantry 
that is changing as the soil itself has changed, only more gradu- 
ally, for the sluggish current of their life and habit is but slowly 
beaten back by the impetus of modern innovations. ... It 
seems as if it were off the high-road, so to speak, of busy modern 
English life; in these days of depression amongst farmers, and 
of absentee landlords, it is visited by few strangers; and the only 
resident upper class is represented by the clergy and a very 
mixed set of tenant-farmers, who, in trouble themselves, generally 
care little for the people under them, except as regards their 
work and pay. 

' Loc. cit., p. 330, 2 " Legends of the Cars," Folk-lore, ii., 1891, p. 147. 



388 THE STUDY OF MAN 

** This is, I dare say, unavoidable; but it throws the people 
back on themselves, and accounts, no doubt, for the survival of 
much amongst them which has decayed elsewhere. Even their 
speech sounds strange to a modern English ear, for it is almost 
pure Saxon, and keeps many of the original inflexions which we 
have lost. 

" The people themselves are not easy to make friends with, for 
they are strongly suspicious of strangers; but once won over, are 
said to be staunch and faithful . . . and intensely averse to 
change or innovation of any sort; many of them live and die 
within the limits of a narrow parish, outside of which they never 
set foot. The younger generations are changing; but they show 
less disbelief in the old legends than indifference to them; they 
seem growing, not so much less superstitious as less impression- 
able. But in some of the old people there is still a simple, serious 
faith that is delightful, and I do not think that elsewhere in Eng- 
land one could nowadays find such a childlike certainty of unseen 
things or such an unquestioning belief in supernatural powers. 
It is not easy, in so short a notice, to present vividly the 
curious mixture of rusticity and savagery, of superstition and in- 
difference, of ignorance and shrewdness, which is found in these 
peasants. . . . I The old and simple heathendom still lay un- 
touched, though hidden below successive varnishes of superstition, 
religion, and civilisation^ ' ^ 

Dr. Douglas Hyde,^ the poet, who has the love of the old 
Ireland within him, writes: 

'' Such myth stories as these ought to be preserved, since they 
are about the last visible link connecting civilised with pre-his- 
toric man, for, of all the traces that man in his earliest period has 
left behind him, there is nothing except a few drilled stones or 
flint arrow-heads that approaches the antiquity of these tales, as 
told to-day by a half-starving peasant in a smoky Connacht cabin. 

' " Legends of the Cars," Folk-lore, ii., 1891, p. 257. 

^ Douglas Hyde, Beside the Fire, a Collection of Irish Gaelic Folk Stories, 1890, 
p. xli. 



ETHNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 389 

" It is time to say a word about the narrators of these stories. 
The people who can recite them are, as far as my researches 
have gone, to be found only among the oldest, most neglected, 
and poorest of the Irish-speaking population. English-speaking 
people either do not know them at all, or else tell them in so bald 
and condensed a form as to be useless. Almost all the men 
from whom I used to hear stories, in the County Roscommon, 
are dead. /Ten or fifteen years ago I used to hear a great many 
stories, but I did not understand their value. Now, when I go 
back for them, I cannot find them. They have died out, and 
will never again be heard on the hillsides, where they probably 
existed for a couple of thousand years ; they will never be re- 
peated there again, to use the Irish phrase, 'while grass grows or 
water runs.' t One old man ' had at one time,' as he expressed it, 
' the full of a sack of stories,' but he had forgotten them.y His 
grandchildren stood by his knee while he told me one or two, 
but it was evident they did not understand a word (as he was 
telling the stories in Irish). His son and daughter laughed at 
them as nonsense. Even in Achill, where, if anywhere one ought 
to find folk-stories in their purity, a fine-looking, dark man of 
about forty-five, who told me a number of them, and could re- 
peat Ossian's poems, assured me that now-a-days when he went 
into a house in the evening, and the old people got him to recite, 
the boys would go out ; ' they would n't understand me,' said he, 
' and when they would n't, they 'd sooner be listening to the low- 
ing of the cows.' This, too, is an island where many people 
cannot speak English." 

L Hyde reminds us that at the time of the famine in '47, 
this pure Aryan language (Irish) was spoken by at least four 
million souls (more than the whole population of Switzer- 
land), and it promises in a few years to become as extinct 
as Cornish. 

Hyde ' gives the following valuable advice as to collecting 
folk-tales in Ireland : 

' Loc. cit., p. xlv. 



390 THE STUDY OF MAN 



r- 



" I may mention here that it is not as easy a thing as might be 
imagined to collect Irish stories. One hears that tales are to be 
had from such and such a man, generally, alas ! a very old one. 
With difficulty one manages to find him out, only to discover, 
probably, that he has some work on hand. If it happens to be 
harvest time it is nearly useless going to him at all, unless one is 
prepared to sit up with him all night, for his mind is sure to be 
so distraught with harvest operations that he can tell you noth- 
ing. If it is winter time, however, and you fortunately find him 
unoccupied, nevertheless, it requires some management to get 
him to tell his stories. Half a glass of ishka-baha, a pipe of to- 
bacco, and a story of one's own are the best things to begin with. 
If, however, you start to take down the story verbatim, with 
pencil and paper, as an unwary collector might do, you de- 
stroy all, or your shanachie becomes irritable. He will not 
wait for you to write down your sentence, and if you call 
out, ' stop, stop, wait till I get this down,' he will forget what 
he was going to tell you, and you will not get a third of his 
story, though you may think you have it all. What you must 
generally do is to sit quietly smoking your pipe, without the 
slightest interruption, not even when he comes to words and 
phrases which you do not understand. He must be allowed 
his own way to the end, and then, after judiciously praising 
him and discussing the story, you remark, as if the thought 
had suddenly struck you, * I 'd like to have that on paper.' 
Then you can get it from him easily enough, and when he 
leaves out whole incidents, as he is sure to do, you, who have 
just heard the story, can put him right, and so get it from him 
nearly in its entirety. Still it is not always easy to write down 
these stories, for they are full of old or corrupted words, which 
neither you nor your narrator understands, and if you press 
him too much over the meaning of these he gets confused and 
irritable." 

This and the two following schedules complete the set 
issued by the Ethnographical Survey Committee. 



E THXO GRA PHICA L IN VE S TIG A TIOXS 39 1 

" Place Name of Observer 

" PECULIARITIES OF DIALECT. 

''''Directions to Collectors of Dialect Tests. 

" I. Do not, if it can be helped, let your informant know the 
nature of your observations. The true dialect speaker will not 
speak his dialect freely or truly unless he is unaware that his 
utterance is watched. In some cases persons of the middle class 
can afford correct information, and there is less risk in allowing 
them to know your purpose. 

" 2. Observe the use of consonants. Note, for example, if 
V and z are used where the standard pronunciation has f and s. 
This is common in the south. 

" 3. Observe very carefully the nature of the vowels. This 
requires practice in uttering and appreciating vowel sounds, 
some knowledge of phonetics, and a good ear. 

" 4. Record all observations in the same standard phonetic 
alphabet, viz., that given in Sweet's Primer of Phonetics. A few 
modifications in this may be made, viz., ng for Sweet's symbol for 
the sound of ?ig in thing j sh for his symbol for the sh in she j ch 
for his symbol for the ch in choose ; th for the th in thi?i j dh for 
the th in then. If these modifications are used, say so. But the 
symbol j must only be used for the y in yoii., viz., as in German, 
If the sound of 7 m just is meant, Sweet's symbol should be used. 
On the whole it is far better to use no modifications at all. 
Sweet's symbols are no more difficult to use than any others after 
a very brief practice, such as every observer of phonetics must 
necessarily go through. 

" 5. If you find that you are unable to record sounds according 
to the above scheme it is better to make no retur?t at all. Incor- 
rect returns are misleading in the highest degree, most of all such 
as are recorded in the ordinary spelling of literary English. 

" 6. The chief vowel-sounds to be tested are those which occur 
in the following words of English origin, viz., 7?ian, hard, name, 
help, 7neat (spelled with ea), green (spelled with ee), hill, wi7ie,fire, 



392 THE STUDY OF MAN 

softy holCy oak (spelled with oa)^ cool^ sun, house, day, law, or words 
involving similar sounds. Also words of French origin, such as 
Just, master {a before s), grant {a before n), try, value, measure, 
bacon, pay, chair, journey, pity, beef, clear, profit, boil, roast, pork, 
false, butcher, fruit, blue, pure, poor, or words involving similar 
sounds. 

" The best accounts of these sounds, as tested for a Yorkshire 
dialect, is to be found in Wright's Dialect of Windhill (English 
Dialect Society, 1892), published by Kegan Paul at 12s. 6d. 
Sweet's symbols are here employed throughout. 

" Sweet's Primer of Phonetics is published by the Oxford Press 
at 3^. dd. 

" A list of text-words (of English origin) is given on p. 42 of 
Skeat's Primer of English Etyinology, published by the Oxford 
Press at li", dd. 

" 7. The task of collecting words which seem to be peculiarly 
dialectal (as to form or meaning, or both) has been performed so 
thoroughly that it is useless to record what has been often already 
recorded. See, for example, Halli well's (or Wright's) Provincial 
Glossary, and the publications of the English Dialect Society. 
In many cases, however, the pronu7iciation of such words has not 
been noted, and may be carefully set down with great advantage. 

" The Rev. Professor Skeat has been kind enough to draw up 
the foregoing directions, and the collections under this head will 
be submitted to him." 



\ 



Place Name of Observer . 



"MONUMENTS AND OTHER REMAINS OF ANCIENT 

CULTURE. 

" Plot on a map, describe, furnish photographs or sketches, 
and state the measurements and names (if any) of these, accord- 
ing to the following classification : 

" Drift implements. Caves and their contents. 

" Stone circles. Monoliths. Lake dwellings. 

" Camps. Enclosures. Collections of hut circles. 



ETHNOGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 393 

** Cromlechs. Cairns. Sepulchral chambers. 

" Barrows, describing the form, and distinguishing those 

which have not been opened. 
" Inscribed stones. 
" Figured stones. Stone crosses. 
" Castra (walled). Earthen camps. 
" Foundations of Roman buildings. 
" Cemeteries (what modes of sepulture). 
** Burials, inhumation or cremation. 
" Detailed contents of graves. 
" Types of fibulae and other ornaments. 
" Coins. Implements and weapons, stone, bronze, or iron. 
" Other antiquities. 

" A list of place-names within the area. No modern names 
required. 
" Special note should be made of British, Roman, and Saxon 
interments occurring in the same field, and other signs of succes- 
sive occupation. 

" Reference should be made to the article * Archaeology ' in 
Notes afid Queries 07i Anthropology^ p. 176. 

** These relate to England only. The sub-committees for other 
parts of the United Kingdom will prepare modified lists. 

*' The collections under this head will be digested by Mr. 
Payne." 

" Place Name of Observer 

" HISTORICAL EVIDENCE AS TO THE CONTINUITY OF RACE. 

" Mention any historical events connected with the place, 
especially such as relate to early settlements in it, or more recent 
incursions of alien immigrants. 

" State the nature of the pursuits and occupations of the in- 
habitants. 

" State if any precautions have been taken by the people to 
keep themselves by themselves ; if the old village tenures of land 
have been preserved. 



394 ^^^ STUDY OF MAN 

*' Has any particular form of religious belief been maintained ? 

" Are the people constitutionally averse to change ? 

" What are the dates of the churches and monastic or other 
ancient buildings or existing remains of former buildings ? 

" Do existing buildings stand on the sites of older ones ? 

" How far back can particular families or family names be 
traced ? 

" Can any evidence of this be obtained from the manor rolls ; 
from the parish registers ; from the tithingmen's returns ; from 
guild or corporation records ? 

*' Are particular family names common ? 

" In what country or local history is the best description of 
the place to be found ? 

" Evidences of historical continuity of customs, dress, dwell- 
ings, implements, etc., should be noted. 

" The collections under this head will be digested by Mr. 
Brabrook." 



T 



APPENDIX A 

HE following is the classification of anthropology which 
has been proposed by Dr. Brinton : 

THE ANTHROPOLOGIC SCIENCES. 

Proposed Classification and Iniei-national Nojtienclature. 

ANTHROPOLOGY. 

I. Somatology. — Physical and Experimental Anthro- 
pology. 

II. Ethnology. — Historic and Analytic Anthropology. 

III. Ethnography. — Geographic and Descriptive Anthro- 

pology. 

IV. ARCHiEOLOGY. — Prehistoric and Reconstructive Anthro- 

pology. 

I. SOMATOLOGY. 

J. Internal Somatology. — Osteology, craniology, prosopology, 
myology, splanchnology. 

2. External Somatology. — Anthropometry, colour, hair, canons 

of proportion, physical beauty. 

3. Psychology. — Experimental and practical, sensation, rates 

of nervous impulse, brain and nerve action. 

4. Develop7nental and Cojnparative Somatology. — Embryology, 

heredity, teratology, human biology, evolution, anatomy 
of anthropoids, ethnic anatomy and physiology, com- 
parative nosology and medical geography, fertility and 

395 



396 THE STUDY OF MAN 

Sterility, racial pathology, criminal anthropology, vital 
statistics, anatomical classification of races, 

II. ETHNOLOGY. 

1. Sociology. — Systems of government and the social contract, 

laws and ethical standards, the marriage relation and 
rules of consanguinity and descent, social classes and 
institutions, international relations (war, commerce, 
colonisation). 

2. Technology. — The utilitarian arts, as tool making, ceramics, 

architecture, agriculture, means of transportation, 
clothing, weights and measures, media of exchange ; 
the esthetic arts — music, drawing, painting, sculpture, 
decoration, games, cookery, perfumery. 

3. Religion. — Psychological origin and development ; per- 

sonal, family, tribal, and world religions ; animism, 
fetichism, polytheism, monotheism, atheism ; mythology 
and mythogeny ; symbolism and religious art ; sacred 
places and objects ; rites, ceremonies, and mortuary 
customs ; religious teachers, classes, and doctrines ; 
theocracies ; analyses of special religions ; philosophy 
and natural history of religions. 

4. Linguistics. — Gesture and sign language ; spoken language, 

parts of speech, logic of grammar, origin, growth, and 
classification of languages, relation to ethnography ; 
written language, pictographic, symbolic, ideographic, 
and phonetic writing, evolution of alphabets, phonetic 
systems ; forms of expression, poetic (metrical, rhyth- 
mical), dramatic, prosaic. 

5. Folk-lore. — Traditional customs and narratives, folk-sayings, 

superstitious beliefs and practices. 

III. ETHNOGRAPHY. 

I, General Ethnography. — Origin, characteristics, and sub- 
divisions of races and peoples. The ' geographical 
provinces ' or ' areas of characterisation.' Anthropo- 



H 



APPENDIX A 397 

geography. Lines of migrations and national inter- 
course. 
2. Special Ethnography. — The Eurafrican or white race 
(North Mediterranean and South Mediterranean 
branches) ; the Austafrican or black race ; the Asian 
race (Sinitic and Sibiric branches) ; the American race ; 
Insular and Littoral peoples (Nigritic, Malayic, and 
Australic stocks). 

IV. ARCHEOLOGY. 

1. General Archaeology. — Geology of the epoch of man. 

Glacial phenomena. Diluvial and alluvial deposits. 
Physical geography of the quaternary. Prehistoric 
botany and zoology. Prehistoric Ages — the Age of 
Stone (palaeolithic period, neolithic period) ; the Age 
of Bronze ; the Age of Iron ; prehistoric commerce ; 
palethnology ; proto-historic epoch. 

2. Special ArchcEology. — Egyptian, Assyrian, Phenician, classi- 

cal, medieval, and American archaeology. 

The urgent need of a uniform classification and nomencla- 
ture for the various sciences connected with the study of man 
must be apparent to all who are familiar with the current litera- 
ture of anthropology. 

The plan proposed above is based upon the works and sug- 
gestions of well-known English, French, German, Italian, and 
American writers. The proposer claims no other credit than that 
of selection. He offers no neologisms. The leading terms, 
those printed in italics and capitals, are substantially the same in 
all the languages named ; they are already domesticated in the 
anthropological writings of every country, and all that is needed 
is a general agreement as to their connotation. 

In order that this may be brought about, the writer respect- 
fully submits the above to those interested in the study of this 

science. 

D. G. Brinton, M.D, LL.D., 

Professor of Ethnology at the Academy of N'atiiral Sciences, 
Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.A. 



APPENDIX B 

METRICAL MEASUREMENTS AND THEIR EQUIVALENTS IN 
INCHES AND HALF-INCHES. 



mm. inches. 


mm. inches. 


mm. inches. 


mm. inches. 


6= i 


495 = i9i 


1004 = 39^ 


1512 = 59^ 


13= i 


508 = 20 


IOI6 = 40 


1524 = 60 


19= 1 


521 = 20^ 


1029 = 40^ 


1537 = 60^ 


25 = I 


534 = 21 


1042 = 41 


1550 = 61 


38= 4 


546 = 2l| 


1055 = 44 


1562 = 61^ 


51 = 2 


559 = 22 


1067 = 42 


1575 = 62 


64= 2| 


571 = 22^ 


1080 = 42^ 


1588 = 62f 


76 = 3 


584 = 23 


1093 = 43 


1601 = 63 


89= 3i 


597 = 23^ 


1 105 = 43| 


1613 = 63^^ 


loi = 4 


610 = 24 


iri8 = 44 


1626 = 64 


114 = 4| 


622 = 24|- 


1 131 = 44^ 


1639 = 64i- 


127 = 5 


635 = 25 


1 144 = 45 


1651 = 65 


140 = 5h 


648 == 25^ 


1156 = 45^ 


1664 = 65^ 


152 = 6 


661 = 26 


1169 = 46 


1677 = 66 


165 = 6i 


673 = 26| 


1181 = 46i 


1690 = 66^ 


178 = 7 


686 = 27 


1194 = 47 


1702 = 67 


190= 7^ 


699 = 27^ 


1207 -— 47i 


1715 = 67i^ 


203 = 8 


7n = 28 


1220 = 48 


1728 = 68 


216= 8^ 


724 = 28^ 


1232 = 48^ 


1740 = 68^ 


228 = 9 


737 = 29 


1245 = 49 


1753 = 69 


241 = 9| 


750 = 29I 


1258 == 49| 


1766 = 69I- 


254 = 10 


762 = 30 


1270 — 50 


1778 = 70 


267 = 10^ 


775 = 3oi 


1283 = 501 


1791 = 7oi 


279 = II 


788 = 31 


1296 = 51 


1804 = 71 


292 = 11^ 


800 = 31^ 


1309 = 51^ 


1817 = 71^ 


305 = 12 


813 = 32 


1321 = 52 


1829 = 72 


318 = I2| 


826 = 32I 


1334 = 52^ 


1842 = 72|^ 


330 = 13 


838 = 33 


1347 = 53 


1855 = 73 


343 = I3i 


851 = 33i 


1359 = 53i 


1867 = 73^ 


356 = 14 


864 = 34 


1372 = 54 


1880 = 74 


368 = I4i 


877 = 34i 


1385 = 54i 


1893 = 74i- 


381 = 15 


889 = 35 


1397 = 55 


1905 = 75 


394 = i5i 


902 = 35i 


1410 = 55i 


1918 = 75i 


406 = 16 


915 = 36 


1423 = 56 


1931 = 76 


419 = 16^ 


927 = 36^ 


1436 -■ 56I 


1943 = 76^ 


432 = 17 


940 = 27 


1448 = 57 


1956 = 77 


444 = I7i 


953 = 37h 


1461 = S7h 


1969 = 77^ 


457 = 18 


966 = 38 


1474 = 58 


1981 = 78 


470 =18^ 


978 = 38i 


i486 = 58^ 


1994 = 78^ 


482 = 19 


991 = 39 


1499 = 59 


2000 = 78f 



398 



INDEX 



Aberdeen, 222, 336 

Aberdeenshire, 222, 309 

Adamnan, 281 

Adler, Dr. Hermann, 19 

Africa, 2li, 229, 252, 254, 308, 319 

— Central, 317 

— cranial index of various peoples, 55 

— West, 224 
Ainus, 55, 56, 59 
Alans or Alani, 46 
Alleluia, 203 
Allen, INIr. Grant, 36 
Altitudinal index, 53 
Amazon, 234 

America, 211, 231, 252, 254, 319 

— cranial index of various peoples, 55 

— North, 215, 225, 231 

— North-West, 211 
American Indians, 59 

— Indian race, 77 

— races, 78 
Americans, 96 
Ammon, Dr. Otto, 363 
Amorites, 14, 21, 22 

Analysis, anthropological measure- 
ments as a means of, to 
Ancient Egyptians, coarse type, 98 

— fine type, 98 

— nasal index of, 98 
Andamanese, 57, 59, 60, 97 
Andree, Dr. R., 205, 211 
Angle of Cuvier, 93 
Angles, 34 

Anglians, 33, 36, 40 
Anglo-Saxon invasion, 66 
Anthropology, 395 

Anthropometrical Laboratory in Cam- 
bridge, 7 
Anthropometry, 354-359 



Antrim, County, 223 

Apache, 231-233 

Apertura pyriformis, 95, 103, 104 

Apes, 103 

Aquitainians, ill 

Arab conquest, 99 

Arabia, 204 

Arabs, 14, 17, 127, 177 

Aramaeans, 19 

Aran, 335 

Aranzadi, Prof. Telesforo de, 148- 

151 
Archaeology, 395-397 
Archibald, E. D., 185 
Argyle, 28 
Arizona, 231, 232 
Armenians, 17, 20, 21 
Arrows, 174, 177 
Aryan race, 81-84 
Aryans, 90, 157, 215, 317 

— in India, 56 
Asia, 308, 319 

— cranial index of various peoples, 

55 

— Minor, 204 
Assyria, 135 
Assyrians, 20 

— high type, 17 ; low type, 17 

— pictures, 142 
Auchencairn, 266, 331 
Austen, H. Godwin, 212 
Australia, 237, 244, 252, 317, 325 

— Central, 210, 213, 249 
Australians, 56, 59, 105, 183 
Austria, hair and eye colour of child- 
ren in, 43 

Auvergnats, 121 
Auvergne, 23, 44 
Azores, 144 



399 



400 



INDEX 



Babylonian type, 17 
Badagas, 86, 87, 92 
Baden-Powell, Captain, 187 
Bailey, J., 324 
Bakairi, 234, 235 
Balfour, Mrs. M. C, 387 

— Right Hon. A. J., 167 
Balham, 219 

Ball games, 174, 175 
Balz, Dr., 80 
Banffshire, 311 
Banim, Miss Mary, 295 
Banks Islands, 194, 238, 252 
Barley Break, 262 
Barnes, Rev. J. P., 223 
Barrington, 276, 329 
Barrow, Mr., 163 
Basel, 226, 260 
Basque, 157 

— wheel, 148 
Bastian, Dr. A., 206 
Batavi, 33 
Batavians, 66 

Batty, Mrs. R. Braithwaite, 229 
Baumes-Chaudes, 63 
Beaumont and Fletcher, 203 
Becq de Fouquieres, M. L. , 212 
Beddoe, Dr. John, 12-48, 63-68, 351, 

369 
Bede, 303 
Bedfordshire, 220 

— hair and eye colour, 32 
Bedouins, 19 

Belfast, 225, 226, 289, 292, 339 
Belgium, hair and eye colour of child- 
ren in, 43 
Belper, 292 
Bengal, 80, 88, 91 
Berbers, 97, 99, 100, 123 
Berkshire, 278, 279 
Bernoni, Sig., 337 
Bertillon, M. A., 2, 4, 75 
Bertin, G., 17, 18 

Bianconi, Mr. Charles, 166-169, 173 
Bilia, 239 

Black races, 58, 78, 81, 96, 104 
Black spot, the Limousin, 115, 117 
Blackstone, Sir W., 203 
Block-wheel car, 169 
Blue eyes, 22 

Blue Hill Observatory, 186 
Boas, Dr. F., 216, 362 
Bocking, 318,320 



Bondin, M., 115, 117 
Boomers, 224 
Bora, 246, 249 
Borneo, 180, 208, 282 
Bororo, 234, 235 
Borreby, 64 

— race, 33 
Borrowdale, 141 

Boston, hair and eye colour, 31 
Bourke, J. G., 231, 232 
Box-kite, 186 
Boyd-Dawkins, Prof., 64 
Brabrook, E., 394 
Brachycephalic skull, 54 
Brachycephals, 19, 20 

— neolithic, 65 
Brahmans, 81, 83-89 
Braintree, 36 
Brandon, 36, 37 
Brazil, 233, 236, 317 
Bremen, 66 

Bridge of Adana, 280 

— Stoicheion of the, 279 
Brinton, Dr. D. G., 51, 397 
British, 38 

— Islands, 219 

— types, 38 
Britton, Mr., 179 

Broca, Prof. P., 94, 96, 99-101, 115, 

117, 121 
Bronze Age, 40, 67, 146, 152, 156 

— cranial index, 66 

— men, 33 

— nasal and cranial index of, loi 
Browne, Dr. C. R., 295, 350, 353 
Brunn, Dr., 148 
Buckinghamshire, 28, 316 
Bugeaud, Marshall, 127 

Bullar, Mr., 144 

Bull-roarer, 219-258 

Bummer, 220, 223, 225 

Burmah, 206 

Burne, Miss C. S., 291, 292, 381-387 

Burt, Captain, 137-139 

Bush, J., 159, 160, 164 

Bushmen, 98, 228, 230, 252, 254,258 

Buzz, 225 

Buzzer, 220 

Bzik, 227 

Cab, 172, 173 
Cadurci, iii 
Caernarvonshire, 298 



INDEX 



401 



Caesar, no 
Calcutta, 2S2 

Cambridge, 50, 220, 268, 270, 276, 
291,318, 329, 339 

— anthropometry, 7 
Cambridgeshire, 34, 220, 315 

— hair and eye colour, 32 
Camping-ground, 175 
Canstadt, 149 

Cantabrian-Austurian wheel, 123 
Car, 130 

— block-wheel, 169 

— low-back, 140, 160 

— Ringsend, 172, 173 

— slide, 133 

Card for hair and eye statistics, 24, 

25 
Cards, playing, 177 
Caribs, 236, 317 
Carr, Sir John, 162 
Cart, evolution of, 128 

— Portuguese, 134 
Caste, 82, 85 

— significance of, 85 
Cat's cradle, 178-184 
Celtas, III 

— of Caesar, 121 
Celtic chariot, 143, 154 

— language, 37 

Celts, 33, 34, 39, 40, III, 121, 143, 
152, 154, 156, 177, 299-301 

— nasal index, 94 
Central Provinces,' 88 

Cephalic index in Dordogne district, 
107-112 

Ceremonial tablets, 241 

Chalmers, Rev. J., 240, 241, 301 

Charente, 126, 127 

Charente-Inferieure, 46 

Chariots, two- wheeled, 137 

Chariot wheels, Greek, 147 

Children, 174 

China, 55, 150, 177, 188, 192, 193, 
205, 206, 216, 225 

Chinese, 199 

Chipiez, M., 142 

Clapham, Dr., 34 

Clarke, Sir E., 260. 328 

Classification, anthropological meas- 
urements as a means of, 10 

Classification of anthropology, 395 

Clayton, Mr., 186 

Clercq, F. S. A. de, 209 



Clog-wheels, 141 

Clonmell, 166 

Codrington, Dr. R. H., 182, 194, 209, 

237-239 
Collignon, Dr. R., 46, 71, 76, 94, 
106-127. 363, 364, 366 

— colour index, 26 
Colour-blindness, 7 

Colour of hair and eyes in Dordogne 

district, 111-115 
Colour-scales, 23 
Columkille, 281, 304 
Concave nose, 71 
Connaught, 28 
Continuity of race, 393, 394 
Contredanse, 266 
Convex nose, 71 
Conze, Prof., 148 
Coranied, 33 
Coritavi, or Coritani, 33 
Cork, 22, 166 
Cornwall, 28 

— hair and eye colour, 32, 37, 38 
Correze, 109-127 

Courting games, 313-328 
Cowen, Mr., 139 
Cowper, H. S., 145 
Cox, Miss Marian R., 377 
Cranial index, 53 

— indices, 67 

— indices of Europeans, 61 

— nasal index, 95 

table of, 96 

Cranium, 48-50 
Cratch cradle, 179 
Crawley, A. E., 256 
Crespigny, Lieut, de, 180 
Creuse, 106, 127 
Criminals, identification of, i 
Croatia, 325 

Croker, T. Crofton, 138-141, 343 

Cro-Magnon, 123, 124 

Crowe, J. O'Beirne, 153-155 

Cu Chulaind, 153-155 

Culin, Mr. Stewart, 179, 1S9, 190, 

192, 205, 217, 225 
Curr, Mr., 317 
Curves of relative brain capacity at 

Cambridge University, 9 
Cushing, F. H., 233 
Cuvier, angle of, 93 
Cymotrichi, 59 
Cyprian wheels, 142 



402 



INDEX 



Dalton, Colonel E. T., 90, gi, 324, 

326 
D'Alviella, Count Goblet, 256 
Dancing, 259 
Danes, 34, 40 
Danish invaders, 68 

— settlements, 37 

— type, 31 
Dartmouth, 37 
Dasyus, 82, 83 
Davis, Barnard, 38 
Denbighshire, 294 
Derby, 33 

Derbyshire, 220, 221, 290, 292 
Derrick, Mr., 166 
Derry, County, 296 
Devonshire, 37 

— hair and eye colour, 32 
Dialect, 391 

Dieffenbach, Dr. E., 181, 195, 209 

Dillaye, F., 188, 194, 204, 212 

Dionysiac mysteries, 227 

"Dish-a-loof," 342 

Dolichocephalic skull, 54 

Dominoes, 177 

Donegal, County, 141, 156 

Dordogne, 106-127 

Dorset, 28 

Down, County, 141, 157, 221, 224, 332 

Dravidians, 82-84, 87, 90, 215 

" Dravv^ a Pail of Water," 298-312 

Drew, Thos. , 225 

Dublin, 139, 156, 161, 162, 275 

Dubois, E., 163 

Dumfriesshire, 298 

Dundonald, 157 

Duruy, Prof., 146 

Dyak, 180, 208 

East Anglia, 36 

East Anglians, 37, 220 

— craniology, 37 

Effect of jaw muscles on skull, 48, 49 
Efficiency, anthropological measure- 
ments as a test of, 6 
Egypt, 125, 135 

— representations of, 17 
Egyptian, 134 

— art, leading characteristics of, 15 

— complexion, 13 

— hair, 13 

— high type, 79 ; low type, 79 

— type, 13 



Egyptians, ancient, 79 

— nasal and cranial index of, 134 
Ehrenreich, Dr. Paul, 235 
Eleusinian mysteries, 256 
Ellice Group, 208 

Ellis, Rev. W., 195 
England, 174 

— hair colour, 28 ; eye colour, 28 
English, 92, 125, 320 
Englishmen, mean cephalic index of, 

68 
Eramo, 240 
Erasmus, 328 
Erect attitude, 47 
Erythrism, 21 
Eskimo, 97, 184, 211, 216, 231, 254 

— nose, 76, 77 

Essex, 36, 219, 318, 320 

— hair and eye colour, 32 
Etheridge, R., 210, 250 
Ethnography, 395-397 

— of Dordogne district, 106-127 
Ethnology, 395 

Europe, 252, 307 

— cranial index of various peoples, 

55 . 
Europeans, 104 
External soul, 191, 200, 311 
Eye colours, 24, 351-354 
Eyre, E. J., 183 

Face, 47 

Faction fights, 216 

Fairies, 335 

Falciform fold, 58 

" Farmer's Den," 265-268 

Fauriel, M., 271 

Fellah, 125 

Fellahin, 13 

Fielde, Miss, 180 

Figura, F., 226, 258 

Fiji- 195 . 

Find-abair, 153 

Finns, 16, 317, 320 

Finsch, Dr. O., 239 

Fison, Rev. Lorimer, 219, 244 

Fitzstephen, 282 

Flinders Petrie, *' New Race," 15 

Flores, 206 

Florida, 182, 237, 238 

Flower, Sir William, 16, 58-61, 96, 

365, 368 
Fly River, 241 



INDEX 



403 



Folk-lore. 375-390- 30 
Forbes, Dr. H. O., 206 
Forma anthropina, 103, 104 

— infantilis, 104 

Fossae prenasales, 104, 105 
Foundation sacrifice, 275-287 
Four races, representation of, in an- 
cient Egypt, 13 
France, 227, 2S4 

— Central, 274 

— nasal and cranial index of ancient 

and modern, loi 
Franklin, 185 
Franks, 124 
Frazer, Dr. J. G., 200, 256, 311, 

341 

— Mrs. J. G., 260, 264 
French, 40 

— nasal indices, 94 
Friedberg, E., 320 
Friesland, 352 
Frisian, 66 

— settlements, 37 
Frisians, 31, 40 
Funeral games, 329 
Furfooz, 64 

Gadow, Dr. Hans, 151 

Gaelic, 37 

Gaidoz, M., 309 

Galicia, 226, 227 

Galley Hill, 63 

Gallon, Dr. Francis, 4, 6-9, 50, 374 

Galway, North, 346 

— West, 345 
Games, 174 

— courting, 313-328 

— kissing, 327 

— wake, 343 

Garland-dressing, 290, 299 
Garnett, Miss Lucy M. J., 59, 281 
Garson, Dr., 2, 66, 365 

Gason, S., 249 
Gastaldi, B., 146 
Gauls, 40, 124, 127, 170 

— nasal and cranial index of, lor 
Gempei, 216 

"Georgina," 331, 332 
Gerhard, Dr., 145 
Germans, 33, 40, 92 
Germany, 224, 282, 320 

— hair and eye colour of children in, 

43 



Gerson da Cunha, Dr., 82 

Gildemeister, 66 

Gill, Rev. Dr. W. Wyatt, 181, 196, 

198, 199 
Girton, 270, 291 
Gloucester, 65 
Gloucestershire, 28 
Glover, Mr., 292 
Goethe, 18 
Gomme, Mrs. A. B., 178, 222, 223, 

258, 278, 282, 287, 289, 316, 337- 

340, 343 

— G. L., 39, 138, 215, 2S2, 290, 294, 

295, 297-299, 300, 305, 311, 340, 

342, 375, 376 
Gope, 241 
Goths, 21 

Gottweiger, Situla, 143 
" Grave-row," 68 
Gray, W., 297, 302, 303 
Greece, 227, 297 

— ancient, 252, 318 
Greek mysteries, 258 

— or classical nose, 74 

— songs, 279 
Greeks, 157, 258 

" Green Gravel," 338-341 

Gregor, Rev. Dr. W., 222, 223 

Gregory, Pope, 303 

Grosse, 264 

Grove, Mrs. Lily, 260, 264 

Guanches, 100 



Haddon, A. C., 97, 183, 239-242, 

244, 295, 301, 350, 353 
Hahn, Dr. E., 135-137 
Hair, 58 
Hair and eye colours of children in 

Austria, 43 

— Belgium, 43 

— Germany, 43 

— Switzerland, 43 

Hair colour, I2, 24, 351, 353 
Hair of Americans, 59 

— Caucasians, 58 

— Mongolians, 59 

— Negroid peoples, 59 

Hall, Mr. and Mrs. S. C, 162, 164- 

166 
Halliwell, 2S8, 289, 392 
Hallstadt race, 122, 143 
Hamilton, J., 156 



404 



INDEX 



Hampshire, 215, 277, 334 

Hamy, E. T., 99, 125, 365 

Hardman, E. T., 250 

Hargrave, 185 

Harrison, Miss Jane, 145 

— Mr. Park, 33, 36 

Hartland, E, Sydney, 200, 299, 307, 
309, 310, 354, 376 

Hatshepu, Queen, 14 

Haute-Vienne, 106-127 

Hayden, Miss M., 345 

Head, B. V., 146 

Head-form in anthropology, 47 

Head measurements, 360-366 

Head of Zeus, 74 

" Heaven and Hell," 284 

Hedley, C, 208 

Height indices of the cranium in Dor- 
dogne district, 119-121 

*' Hell," 262, 263 

Henderson, W. , 290, 294, 342 

Hera, 155 

Herbette, M,, 2 

Hereford, 382 

Herts, 28 

Hervey Islands, 181, 195, 199 

Hewitt, J. F., 91 

Heywood, Thos., 260 

High-bridged nose, 71 

Highlands, 281 

Hissarlik, 136 

Historical evidence, 393 

Hittites, 20, 21 

Hobson, Mrs. Carey, 231 

Hohberg, 66 

Holy well, 291 

Holywood, 332 

I'Homme-mort, 63 

Hone, W., 162, 202, 203 

Hope, R. C, 292, 293 

Horton-Smith, R. J., 37 

Hovorka, Dr., 73, 74, 103-105 

Howitt, A. W., 246-248, 317 

Human beast of burden, 129 

Hummer, 219 

Humming-top, 202, 205, 208, 2ii, 
213 

Huntingdonshire, hair and eye col- 
our, 32 

Huxley, Prof. T. H., 48 

Hyde, Dr. Douglas, 388, 389 

Hyksos, 15, 16, 126 

Hypenetian, 58 



Iberian, 38, 39, 124 
Iceni, 36 

Index of nigrescence, 24 
India, 56, 57, 193, 324, 325 

— nasal index, 81 

— Southern, 92, 342 
Indo-Polynesians, 96 
Inglis, H. D., 163 
Inishbofin, 129 
Inishshark, 129 

Initiation ceremonies in Australia, 

246-251 
Inverness, 138, 139 
Ireland, 129, 131, 132, 134, 152, 159, 

162, 224, 295, 341, 343, 344, 346, 

388 

— eye colour, 28 

— hair colour, 28 
Irish, 31, 326 
Isle of Wight, 290 

Jacobs, Joseph, 18, 21 

Jamieson, 223, 340 

Japan, 55, 179, 180, 188, 192, 200, 

205, 206, 211, 225 
Japanese, 57, 80 

— coarse type, 80 

— fine type, 80 
Jaunting-car, 159-173 
Java, 194, 206, 212, 237 
Jaw, human, 47-49 

— muscles, 30 

" Jenny Jones," 329-339 
Jewish nose, 20, 71, 73 

— type, persistency of, 18 
Jews, 14, 17, 21, 320 

— Ashkenazim, 18, 21 

— blond type, 19 

— comparative infertility of mixed 

marriages, 18 

— dark type, 18 

— German-Polish, 18, 21 

— high type, 17 

— low type, 18 

— red hair, 21 

— Sephardim, 21 

— Spanish, 21 
Jingle, 172, 173 
Jutes, 46 

Kaffir, 231, 252 
Kafirs, 90 
Kalmuk, 58 



INDEX 



405 



Kalmuk's skull, after Ranke, 52 

Kemping, 175 

Kent, 278 

Kerry, 341 

Kevin's, St., Well, 295 

Kincardineshire, 222 

Kintail, 133 

Kipling, Rudyard, 124 

Kirkcudbrightshire, 266, 331 

Kirkmichael, 311 

Kissing games, 327, 328 

Kites, 184-201 

— Chinese, 189 

— fighting, 193 

— in meteorology, 185 

— in Japan, igo 

— in Solomon Islands, 189 

— Korean, 189, 190 

*' Knights from Spain," 320, 326 

Kohl, J. G., 211 

Koitapu, 301 

Kolarians, 90, 91 

Kolhs, 91 

Konos, 228 

Kopts, 100 

Korea, 177, 179, 180, 189, 190, 200, 

205, 216-218 
Kotas, 86, 87, 91, 92 
Krause, E., 239 
Kurnai, 248 
Kymri, 124, 364 

— nasal index, 94 

"Lady on a Mountain," 527 

Lancashire, 290, 293 

Lang, Andrew, 227, 231, 237, 252 

Lapland, 57 

Lapps, 317 

Late Celtic, cranial index, 67 

La Tene, 143 

Laverock, W. S.,222 

Lawrence, Mrs., 270, 291 

Leicester, 33, 34, 65 

— hair and eye colour, 35 
Leicestershire, hair and eye colour, 

Leiotrichi, 59 
Lemovices, no, in 
Lepers' Island, 182, 194 
Leptorhine, 75, 96 
Life-token, 191, 200 
Lincoln, 31, 33 

— hair and eye colour, 35 



Lincolnshire, 31, 220, 3S7 
— hair and eye colour, 32 
Linguistics, 396 
Livi, Dr., 362 
London, 316 

" London Bridge," 275-287 
Long Barrows, 63 
Long Barrow type, 36 
" Lords from Spain," 320-326 
Low-back car, 160, 161 
Lucian, 228 
Ludlow, 214 
'* Lump of Sugar," 291 
Luschan, Dr. Felix von, 19, 21 
Lyall, Sir A., 84, 88 

Macalister, Prof. A., 105, 365 

Macdonald, Rev., 317 

Mackintosh, Mr. D., 31 

Madras, 85, 92 

Mahr, 319 

" Maiden's Dance," 337 

Malasia, 206 

Malay, 194, 206-208, 213, 252 

— Archipelago, 212, 237, 326 

— States, 236 
Malays, 103, 194 
Malton, J., 139 
Mangaia, 196, 198 
Mantegazza, Prof. P., 362 
Maories, 213-237 

— distribution of colour of eyes in 

France (Topinard), 43 

— distribution of colour of hair in 

France (Topinard), 44 

— distribution of dark eyes in Eng- 

land (Beddoe), 29 

— distribution of excess of pure 

blond over pure dark type in Eng- 
land (Beddoe), 30 

— distribution of hair and eye colours 

in England, 27-30 

— index of nigrescence in England 

(Beddoe) 27-29 
Marindin, G. E., 143 
Mariner's compass, 199 
Markham, C. R., 236 
Marriage by capture, 317 

— by purchase, 319-322 
Martial, 69 

Martin, Mr,, 298 
Martins, Dr. von, 317 
Marvin, Prof. C. F., 185 



4o6 



INDEX 



Maspero, G., 13, 79 

Masseter muscles, 48, 49 

Matthews, R. H., 246, 249, 251 

Matthews, Dr. Washington, 232 

May-day, 315, 316 

Mayo, 346 

McAdie, A., 185 

McLennan, J. F., 81 

Mean cephalic index of Englishmen, 63 

Measurement of eyesight, 7 

Measurements, metrical, 398 

— nasal, 365-370 
Mediterranean, 56 

— nasal index, 94 

— race, 15, 21, 39, 122, 124, 157, 364 
Melanesians, 78, 213, 237 
Melanochroi, 56, 59 

Mar, Murray Island, 207, 209 
Merovingian skulls, 102 
Mesaticephalic skull, 54 
Mesopic, 88 
Mesorhine, 75, 76, 96 
Meteorology, kites in, 185 
Metrical measurements, 398 
Michaelis, J. D., 320 
Middle Ages, 68 

— cranial index, 67 
Mies, Dr., 362 
Mincopies, 57 
Mitchell, Sir A., 131, 132 
Mohar, 319 
Mongolian, 58 

— type, 58-60 
Mongoloid race, 91 
Monkeys, noses of, 69 
Monseur, M., 309 
Montgomeryshire, 221, 222, 385 
Monuments, 392 

Moor, 179 

Moore, Prof. Willis L., 1S5 

Morality, 306 

Mortillet, Prof. G. de, 40 

Mota, 238 

Mothering Sunday, 383 

Motu, 182, 301 

Motu-Motu, 240 

Muhammadans, 86, 92, 93 

Murdoch, J., 211, 225 

Murray Island, 207, 209, 212 

Myers, Dr. C. S., 36, 66 

Mykengean cars, 148 

— period, 146 
Myres, J. L., 145 



Mysteries, 256 

— Dionysiac, 227 

— Greek, 258 
Mystery, 228, 229 

Naga Hills, 212 
Nagas, 341 
Nahuquas, 236 
Napier, 341 
Nares, R., 179, 203 
Nasal bones, 95, 102 

— and cranial index of ancient and 

modern France, 98, loi 

— and cranial index of Egyptians, 

100 

— and cranial index of Parisians, loi 

— index, India, 81 

— index of ancient Egyptians, 98 

— index in Dordogne district, 118 

— index of the living, 75, 77 

— indices, French, 94 

— indices of Southern India, 86 

— measurements, 366-369 
Nasalis larvatus, 70 
Naso-malar index, 368 
Nature, goddess of, 171 
Neanderthal, 63 
Negrilloes, 59 
Negritoes, 57, 58 

Negroes, 13-15, 78, 103, 104, 364 
Nehring, Dr. A., 49 
Neolithic, 36, 39, 123, 124 

— brachycephals, 65 

— cranial index, 66 

— nasal index, loi 

— type, 64 
Neolithic Age, 63 
Neubauer, Dr. A., 18 

Newell, W, W., 175, 263, 264, 269- 

273, 283, 286, 287, 337 
New Guinea, 97, 174, 182, 237, 239, 

240, 252, 301 
New Hebrides, 194 
" New Race," Flinders Petrie, 15 
New Zealand, 181, 184, 195, 209, 213, 

237. 252 
Nilgiri Hills, 85, 91, 93 
" Noddy," 172, 173 
Norfolk, 36, 220, 221 

— hair and eye colour, 32 
Norseman, 40 

Northampton, hair and eye colour, 35 
Northamptonshire, 33, 34 



INDEX 



407 



Northamptonshire hair and eye colour, 

32 
Northumberland, 64, 292, 293 
North Wales, 64 

North-Western Provinces, 81, 90, 215 
Nose, 69-105 

— concave, 71 

— convex, 71 

— high-bridged, 71 

— Jewish, 71 

— Papuan, 71 

— Roman, 69 

— sinuous, 71 

— snub, 69 

— straight, 71 
Noses of monkeys, 69 
Nottingham, 31-34, 215 

— hair and eye colour, 35 
Nottinghamshire, hair and eye colour, 

32 
Nubia, 98 
" Nuts in May," 313-316 

" Oats, Beans, and Barley." 270-272 
Oceania, 198, 200, 208, 237 

— cranial index of various peoples, 55 
O'Curry, E., 132, 154 
Orang-utan, 103 

Orion's Belt, 197 

Oro-stick, 224, 229 

Orpen, Mr., 229 

Orthognathous, 49 

Owen, Rev. Elias, 223, 342, 385 

Ox-carts, 151 

Ox- waggon, 137 

Pack animal, 129 
Palaeolithic man, 39, 63, 123 

— nasal index, 100, loi 
Palgrave, 204 
Palmer, E., 251 
Paniyans, 92, 86, 87, 89 
Panjab, 88, 90 
Papuan nose, 71 
Papuans, 97, 210, 212 
Parakite, 188 

Pariahs. 84, 86, 87-89, 92 
Paris, 203 
Parish top, 203 
Parisians, 23 

— nasal and cranial index of, loi 
Pastoral kings, 142 

Pattern, 303 



Patterson, Miss Clara M., 321, 332, 

339 

— W. H., 289 
Payne, 393 

Peg-top, 202, 208, 212 
Penka, Karl, 90 
Penpont, 298 
Perrot, M., 142 
Persistence of type, 61 
Peruvians. 236 
Petrie, Flinders, 99 
Petrocorii, no, in 
Phillips, Prof., 31, 34 
Phoenicians, 14, 18, 19 
Photography, 372-375 
Physical characters, 13 
Pima, 233 

Pineau, Prof. L., 283 

Pin-offerings, 290, 299 

Pin-wells, 293 

Pipes, 346 

Pitcairn Island, 209 

Pitt-Rivers, General, 66, 300 

Platyopic, 88 

Platyrhine, 75, 76, 96 

Plaustrum, 143 

Playing cards, 177 

Pleiades, 196 

Pliny, 204 

Pneumatic tires, 168 

Pococke, 341 

Poesche, T., 134 

Poland, 226 

Poles, 227 

Polo, 175 

Polynesia, 195, 198, 199, 213, 237 

Polynesians, 59, 96, 20S 

Poole, Dr. R. Stuart, 14, 16 

" Poor Mary sits a-weeping," 327, 328 

Portugal, 144 

Portuguese cart, 134, 139, 149 

Powell, Major J. W., 232 

Proboscis-monkey, 70 

Prognathous, 48 

Pro-opic, 88 

Proto-Dravidian, 56 

Prussia, 226, 326 

Psychology, 395 

Purity of type, 60 

Quatrefages, Professor A. de, 56, 365 
Queensland, 210, 213 

— North, 213, 346 



4o8 



INDEX 



Rag-well, 294 

Rain-charm, 230 

Ratzel, Prof. F., 211, 239 

Rawson, Sir R., 38 

Ray, S. H., 239, 242 

Read, C. H., 206-208 

Red races, 58 

Reeves, W., 281, 304 

Religion, 306, 396 

Renan, 18 

Reuleaux, Dr., 135 

Rhombus, 228, 232 

Rhys, Prof., 299, 308 

Riedel, Dr., 260 

Ringsend car, 172, 173 

Ripley, Dr. W. Z., 362, 363 

Risley, H. H., 81, 85, 88, 90, 368, 

369 
Roberts, C.,38 
Roller, 134, 135, 141 
Roman conquest, 125 

— domination, 65 

— nose, 69 
Romano-Britons, 36 

— British, 67 

— cranial index, 67 
Rongo, 197 
Rorrington Green, 291 
Rotch, Lawrence, 185 
Roth, H. Ling, 180, 208 
Round Barrow, 36 

— cranial index, 67 

— race, 64 
Row graves, 66 
Row grave type, 36 
Russia, 325 
Ruthenians, 227 
Rutland, 33 

— hair and eye colour, 32 

Sacred trees, 307 

— wells, 307 

Sacrifice, foundation, 280-283 

Salruck, 345 

Santa Cruz, 194 

Sarasin, 56, 59, 326 

Savoyards, 33 

" Saw-fish dance," 274 

Saxon, cranial index, 67 

— skull, 37 
Saxons, 40 
Scandinavian invaders, 68 

— type, 34 



Scandinavians, 320 

Scape-goat, 190 

Scheffer, Johann, 137 

Schellong, O., 239 

Schlegel, Gustav von, 202, 205, 212 

Schliemann, Dr., 204 

Schmeltz, Dr., 209, 225, 233, 236 

Schmidt, 365 

Schwirrholz, 226 

Scotch, 33 

Scotland, 222, 266, 298, 341 

— eye colour, 28 ; hair colour, 28 
Scottish Highlanders, 38 
Sculptors of ancient Greece, 50 
Secret societies, Melanesian, 257 
Seemann, 195 

Selangor, 206, 207, 236 
" Sellenger's Round," 261 
Semites, 13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 38 
Semitic race, 99 

— writing, 21 
Sephardim, 21 
Sergi, Prof., 15, 122 
Shakespeare, 203 
Shepherd kings, 15, 16 
Shropshire, 220, 221, 279, 292, 334, 

382 
Siam, 193, 201, 206, 282 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 262, 263 
Siedel, H., 222 
Simian groove, 103, 105 
Sinclair, 311 
Sinuous nose, 72 
Sion type of Switzerland, 33 
Skeat, Rev. Prof., 392 
Skeat, W., 236 
Skull of Bolognese lap-dog, 49 

— Eskimo dog, 49 
Slavs, 318 
Slide-car, 131-133 

Smith, W. Robertson, 256, 311, 320 

Snub nose, 69 

Society Islands, 195 

Sociology, 396 

Solomon Islands, 209, 237, 252 

Somatology, 395 

Soul, external, 191, 200, 311 

Souling, 383 

Southampton, 334 

Southern India, 92 

South Saxons, 37 

Spain, 21, 151 

Spanish waggons, 148 



INDEX 



409 



Spencer, Herbert, 264 

Spinning-wheels, 136 

Spoke-wheel, 142 

Spy, 63, 123 

Staffordshire, 220, 221, 290, 383 

Stature in Dordogne district, 11 5-1 18 

Steinen, Karl von den, 233, 235, 236 

Stephan, Herr, 134 

Stevens, 203 

Stewart Islands, 207, 208 

Stirling, Dr. E. C, 210, 213, 250 

Straight nose, 71 

Straits Settlements, 206-208 

Straw harness, 132 

Strutt, J., 184, 204, 212 

Stuart, Mr. H. A., 84, 88, 154 

Stuart-Glennie, J. S., 58 

Stuckey, Dr. H., 34 

Suabia, 234 

Suffolk, 36, 214 

— hair and eye colour, 32 
Sullivan, W. K., 132, 153, 154 
Sumatra, 234 

Sunderland, 336 
Surrey, 219, 221 
Sweet, 3gi, 392 
Switzerland, 64, 266 

— hair and eye colour of children in, 

43 
Symbolism, 256, 257 
Syrians, 100 
Syro-Arabs, 99, 100 
Szombathy, J., 143 

Table of cranial nasal indices, 96 
Table of races, nasal index of the 

living, 77 
Tahennu or Tamehu, 14 
Tahiti, 195 
Tamate, 238, 240 
Tane, 197 
Tappeiner, 362 
Tatars, 16 

Taylor, Canon Isaac, 138 
Taylor, Rev. R., 181, 195, 209 
Technology, 396 
Teetotum, 202, 207, 208 
Temporal crest, 48 
Ten Kate, Dr. H., 233 
Tennis, 175 
Tennyson, 74 
Teutonic names, 33 

— hordes, 46 



Teutons, 318 

Theal, G. M'Call, 231 

Thomas, Oldfield, 368, 369 

"Threading the Needle," 273 

Thunder spell, 222 

Thurston, Mr. Edgar, 85-88, 92, 93 

Timorlaut, 206 

Tiparu, 240 

Toaripi, 240 

Tobacco, 345, 346 

Todas, 86, 91, 92 

Tol, 205 

Tompkins, 290 

Topinard, Dr. P. , 43-46, 76, 96, 362, 

365, 367 
Tops, 202-213 

— humming, 202, 205, 208, 2II, 213 

— parish, 203 

— peg, 202, 208, 212 

— town, 203 

— whipping, 202, 203, 204, 209 
Torres Straits, 182, 207, 209, 212, 

239, 242, 244, 252, 274, 305, 319, 

336 
Trees, sacred, 307 
Tregear, E., 182, 195, 209 
Troy, 204 

Tug-of-war, 214-218 
Tunisians, 364 
Turish-o-Lyn, 296 
Turks, 16, 126 
Turndijn, 219 
Turner, W. Y., 182 
Twiss, J., 138, 140 
Tylor, Prof. E. B., 144, 152, 183, 

198, 219, 222, 226, 231, 253, 282 

Ulotrichi, 59 
Ulster, 28 

Uniformity of physical characteristics, 
60 

Vacher, M., 118 
Vancouver, 2H 
Veddahs, 56, 59, 97, 324 
Venn, Dr., 8, 50 
Verrall, Margaret, 145 
Virchow, Prof. R., 66, 119, 362 

Waggons of Spain, 147 
Wake games, 343 
Waldteufel, 225 



4IO 



INDEX 



Wales, 28, 222 

— eye colour, 28 

— hair colour, 28 

— North, 64 

Wallace, Dr. A. R., 180, 234 

Walloons, 64 

War chariot, 146, 152, 153 

Ward, R. DeC, 186 

Warwickshire, 220, 221 

Waterford, 285 

Water worship, 288-312 

Weber, Dr. Max, 206 

Weisbach, 362 

Welch, R., 345, 346 

Welcker, 363 

Well-dressing, 290 

Well, rag, 294 

Wells, pin, 93 

Wells, sacred, 307 

Welsh literature, 33 

Wessex Saxons, 37 

West Coast, 252, 254 

Westermarck, E., 256, 317, 319, 320 

Westmoreland, 296 

West Saxons, 37 

Wheel, Basque, 149 

— solid, ancient Greece, 149 

— solid, Basque, 149 
Wheels, 133, 138 



Wheels, clog, 141 

— on coins, 147, 148 

— spoke, 142 

"When I was a Naughtv Girl," 265, 

268 
Whipping-top, 202, 204, 205 
White races, 58, 77, 96 
Wicklow, 140, 295 
Wilde, Lady, 343, 347 

— Sir W., 316 
Wilson, Alexander, 185 
Wilts, 28 

Woglom, G. T., 187, 192, 194 
Worcestershire, 290 

Xanthochroi, 59 

Yates, J., 143 

Yellow races, 57, 58, 71, 78, 96, 103, 

105 
York, Cape, 346 
Yorkshire, 220, 293, 294 
Yoruba, 229, 230 

Zampa, 362 
Zeus, 51, 75 
Zuckerhandl, 362 
Zulus, 254 
Zuni, 232 



The Science Series 



Edited by Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Columbia Uni- 
versity, with the cooperation of Frank Evers Beddard, 
F.R.S., in Great Britain. ' Fully illustrated, 8°. 

Each volume of the series will treat some department of 
science with reference to the most recent advances, and will 
be contributed by an author of acknowledged authority. 
Every effort will be made to maintain the standard set by the 
first volumes, until the series shall represent the more im- 
portant aspects of contemporary science. The advance of 
science has been so rapid, and its place in modern life has 
become so dominant, that it is needful to revise continually 
the statement of its results, and to put these in a form that is 
intelligible and attractive. The man of science can himself 
be a specialist in one department only, yet it is necessary for 
him to keep abreast of scientific progress in many directions. 
The results of modern science are of use in nearly every pro- 
fession and calling, and are an essential part of modern 
education and culture. A series of scientific books, such as 
has been planned, should be assured of a wide circulation, 
and should contribute greatly to the advance and diffusion of 
scientific knowledge. 

The volumes will be in octavo form, and will be fully illus- 
trated in so far as the subject-matter calls for illustrations. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York & London 



THE SCIENCE SERIES. 



J 



(Volumes in press and in preparation April, 1898) 

The Study of Man. By Professor A. C. Haddon, Royal College of 
Science, Dublin. (May, 1898.) 

^ The Groundwork of Science. By St. George Mivart, F.R.S. 
Rivers of North America. By Israel C. Russell, M.S.C.E., Professor 

of Geology in the University of Michigan. 
The stars. By Professor Simon Newcomb, U.S.N., Nautical Almanac 

Office, and Johns Hopkins University. 

Meteors and Comets. By Professor C. A. Young, Princeton University, 

The Measurement of the Earth. By Professor T. C. Mendenhall, 
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, formerly Superintendent of the U. S. 
Coast and Geodetic Survey. 

Earth Sculpture. By Professor James Geikie, F.R.S. , University of 
Edinburgh. 

Volcanoes. By T. G. Bonney, F.R.S., University College, London. 
Earthquakes. By Major C. E. Button, U.S.A. 

Physiography ; The Forms of the Land. By Professor W. M. Davis, 
Harvard University. 

The History of Science. By C. S. Peirce. 

General Ethnography. By Professor Daniel G. Brinton, University 
of Pennsylvania. 

Recent Theories of Evolution. By J. Mark Baldwin, Princeton 
University. 

Whales. By F. E. Beddard, F.R.S., Zoological Society, London. 
y The Reproduction of Living Beings. By Professor Marcus Hartog, 
Queen's College, Cork. 

Man and the Higher Apes. By Dr. A. Keith, F.R.C.S. 

Heredity. By J. Arthur Thompson, School of Medicine, Edinburgh. 

Life Areas of North America : A Study in the Distribution of 
Animals and Plants. By Dr. C. PIart Merriam, Chief of the Bio- 
logical Survey, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 

y/ Age, Growth, Sex, and Death. By Professor Charles S. Minot, 
Harvard Medical School. 
Bacteria. Dr. J. H. Gladstone. 
History of Botany. Professor A. H. Green. 
Planetary Motion. G. W. Hill. 
Infection and Immunity. Geo. M. Sternberg, Surgeon-General U.S.A. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York & London 




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